Dual Installation of Vista and XP this way Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Dual Installation of Vista and XP this way in the Windows Vista forums; Hi I have a laptop with windows vist home premium preloaded.My old desktop had Windows xp prof . Now i want dual booting. Can i proceed like this. I format ...

[donnie_b2007]

Hi
I have a laptop with windows vist home premium preloaded.My old desktop had Windows xp prof . Now i want dual booting. Can i proceed like this.

I format the entire drive. Load XP with the Bootable Windows Xp Installation CD on on one partition . Then I run the recovery Disks and load The vista on another partition .( i have a question here , i dont know whether with recovery disk i get to choose where i will install Windows Vista ).Then i run EasyBCD or a softwre like that to register both the OS in Boot Loader.

Thanks

[Znod]

I don't think your recovery disk is likely to allow anything but returning to factory fresh. Thus, you would need to start with what you have or by recovering first. I would think that you then could partition the drive and intall XP on the new partition. You then could, for example, use Vista Boot Pro to straighten out the Vista boot loader so that you could dual boot. What did you mean "load XP with the Bootable ...? Did you mean restore it using, for example, Acronis True Image. If so, the procedure is worth a try. I would assume that Vista Boot Pro again could straighten things out.

[crabby]

Recovery disks are notorious for not allowing the end user to change the system. Basically, once XP is installed and you use it, it will simply delete it again.

However, there is a solution!

1. Use a partition manager to resize your current Vista partition.
2. Install XP on the new partition.
3. Recreate the bootloader with EasyBCD.

That way you don't need to use the recovery disk.

crabby

[donnie_b2007]

Hi
But I was thinking of something else.Acually I have loaded so many programs and drivers in Vista which has made it very slow.Now what i need is to fresh format the drive , return to factory settings by Vista recovery disk and then
install Xp and so on . I heard from someone that formatting will delete some vital info and My Genuine vista will become a trial version .Is it true??

[crabby]

As long as the Vista that it came with is reinstalled it will activate fine. If you use the recovery media first and then do what I have said you will have a fresh install of both Vista and XP.

crabby

[Znod]

Originally Posted by donnie_b2007

Hi
But I was thinking of something else.Acually I have loaded so many programs and drivers in Vista which has made it very slow.Now what i need is to fresh format the drive , return to factory settings by Vista recovery disk and then
install Xp and so on . I heard from someone that formatting will delete some vital info and My Genuine vista will become a trial version .Is it true??

Please see my prior post.

[Znod]

Originally Posted by crabby

Recovery disks are notorious for not allowing the end user to change the system. Basically, once XP is installed and you use it, it will simply delete it again.

However, there is a solution!

1. Use a partition manager to resize your current Vista partition.
2. Install XP on the new partition.
3. Recreate the bootloader with EasyBCD.

That way you don't need to use the recovery disk.

crabby

That's what I said--more or less.