Dual Boot Vista & XP

Question

Hi everyone I have purchased a Dell Dimension 520 with Vista Home Prem installed. Some of my old software will not run on Vista and some hardware I need is not going to be supported on Vista. I wish to dual boot to XP to run the software and use the hardware. A standard XP Home CD gives a blue screen on installation during the initial portion of the setup, just after it loads the initial drivers. Any help much appreciated. Russ

Manfredo52 · Answer

I gather that you will need a XP CD with SP2 and also you need to have a second partition on the drive into which you can install XP. After the installation you will find XP booting, with no option to boot Vista. Insert the VISTA CD/DVD and boot frm that, choose repair options and the first item (boot repair...). Then you can boot into VISTA but no option to boot into XP yet. Download the VISTABoot Pro tool or use bcdedit manually edit bootsettings. VistaBootpro can do that for your though. regards

BSA70 · Answer

Get ready for problems. Dual boot does not work well between these two os.

scanetics · Answer

Yes I have partitioned the hard drive (20gig partition). Yes I have the CD with windows and SP2 on it. When I reboot with the XP cd in the drive it goes through the usual steps but then comes up with an error message and won't go any further. Could Dell have put something in place so that a Dell XP CD has to be used? Thanks Russ

Manfredo52 · Answer

Dual boot does work well ! I am having Vista Ultimate AND XP pro on this Dim.9200(CPS 410) system since quite a while. The only problem seems to be that when booting into XP, the restore points in Vista might get or will be lost. But since I am using an image backup tool, I dont have a problem with that.

And no, Dell does not have built in a "anti someoneelsesXP_CD" thing.
(I have used another XP licence for my setup here)

Are you chosing the right steps after the XP CD boots ? May be you have to amend to way thru the menue of the setup program. Can try here right now...+ I couldnt explain anyway since my version is german and I wouldnt know the english setup menue. Sorry.

Message Edited by Manfredo52 on 11-11-2007 12:02 PM

yarddog983 · Answer

I'm sure there's a way to install XP with Vista already installed but I don't think you can do it on the same drive without problems. To have them on the same drive you must have XP installed first on the fully formatted drive then create a second partition when you install Vista. Vista's boot manager will then handle the boot options.This is the most painless way to do it. Good rule is to install oldest to newest.

Hottspitta jR · Answer

This shouldn't be a bit of a problem if for say you have of course a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and around 2 - 4Gb of DDR2 RAM and you make sure most of your stuff is running dual channel but dual on the OS's would take up both cores but prob only the one thread! (Depends on Processor) But I do not advise unless everything possible is on dual channel type mode except maybe the video card. Also I recommend using 2 different drives for all this 1 will slow down the speed of the HD in a probable half then normal! I say this because there will be hang of the majority if you are not set up in a dual channel mode. The only real concern is the processor i see other than that.

Message Edited by Hottspitta jR on 11-11-2007 01:03 PM

yarddog983 · Answer

I have no idea what the last poster is talking about. I have had this computer running dual boot XP & Vista for six months now. When I first went to dual boot I had a Pentium D 2.8 and the Dell supplied video card (ATI 1300 Pro) with 2 gigs factory Dell RAM and everything worked perfectly. All I did was get a 40 gig drive to install Vista on and used the shared folders in XP for storage of pics,music between both OS's. XP MCE was already installed on the 160 so I put the 40 in, put the Vista DVD in then restarted. Since then I have upgraded to C2D E-6600, EVGA 8600 512 Graphics, 600 watt PSU, and Auzentech X-Fi Prelude Audio without any problems. Hardware should be uninstalled from both OS's before upgrading to new hardware. Make sure you have all the drivers handy on a flash or CD before you proceed with these installs. Both OS's do there own thing. What I recommend if you are using one drive is; fresh install XP and get everything running and all drivers installed then install Vista. Partition the drive as you want during the Vista install but I would cut the drive in half. The only catch is like an earlier poster said, you will loose your restore points in Vista every time you boot to XP. There's no way around this.

Message Edited by yarddog983 on 11-11-2007 08:33 PM

Manfredo52 · Answer

Well, I'd like to repeat what I said before, I have had several PCs with different systems installed parallel and with this one (Dimension 9200, see below) I had Vista Ultimate installed first (C Drive) and afterwards XP (E drive) and NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER, even on a RAID 0 System. VistaBootPro will enable dual boot so that you can choose during boot time which system to run. And nothing more. And nothing to speculate. Restore point will be lost, that is all. I have it, it is working.

Manfredo52 · Answer

Found a guide where an installation of XP is described. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp At which point do you get the problem ? Step 5 ?

scanetics · Answer

Step 3 is where the problem is. It gets to this point and that's where the error occurs.

Manfredo52 · Answer

Did you check the BIOS whether the system is set to RAID and you may want to change to detect/ATA or similar ? I hope someome from DELL can help here since I can see that they are offering drivers for XP, so the system as such shud be capable of handling XP.

yarddog983 · Answer

I'm not that good with computers either but am learning every day. I'm not one to leave things alone while at the same time I look for the easiest way to do things with the fewest recources. The process I described earlier worked great for me. Starting fresh always works best for me. I would do it again without hesitation. The other posters advice is solid I'm sure with the use of VistaBootPro but I'm partial to using all of Windows built in tools instead of third party software. I keep all my software to a minimum. I checked my BIOS and the RAID is on and always has been. Maybe that is why it went so well for me. It warns you if you try to change that setting any other way that there may be problems so I never messed with it. XP & Vista 32 bit drivers are available on Dells site fot the E-520. Before you start, download all of them and save to flash drive or CD. Oh and yes I do get to choose the OS I want to boot during start up. In Vista you can even choose which one is default and the amount of time the choices are displayed. After 5 seconds mine automatically boots to Vista if I don't do anything.

Dell E-520
Dual Boot XP MCE 2005 & Vista Home Premium
2 gigs RAM - Dell's stock RAM
E-6600 C2D at stock 2.4 ghz's clock
1 - 160 gig SATA Seagate Barracuda - XP

1 - 40 gig SATA WD Caviar - Vista
EVGA e-GeForce 8600 GTS 512 mb video
Auzentech X-Fi Prelude Sound Card
AverMedia M-780 TV Tuner Combo with Remote
Agere Systems PCI Soft Modem
2 Sony DVD RW drives - SATA
Ultra Card Reader & Floppy Combo
Ultra 600 watt X-Connect PSU
Samsung SyncMaster Wide Screen 19"
Logitech Z-5500 Speakers
HP PSC 1610v All-In-One
Microsoft Web Cam
Logitech USB Mic

Message Edited by yarddog983 on 11-12-2007 03:39 PM

Message Edited by yarddog983 on 11-12-2007 03:52 PM

Message Edited by yarddog983 on 11-12-2007 03:55 PM

jimjo · Answer

Yarddog  I was thinking of running the same kind of set-up on my Dimension 8300. I'm not real good with computers, is it really as easy as plugging the new drive in and loading Vista on to it ? Do you get a screen at start-up to choose which OS to boot from? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Windows General

Was this post helpful?