Added on 12/11/2007
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Vista and Windows XP Dual Boot
Before you purchase Vista ,I recommend to check whether
your computer has the minimum requirements to run the edition of Vista you are
looking at.
You can do this task easily by downloading
Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
from Windows Vista website.
Now that you know you have a computer Vista ready you can
start the installation.
If you have more than 1 Hard drive or partitions, there is not problem.But if
you have Windows XP installed on a partition (i.e. C:)that is taking 100 % of the
drive you'll have to create some space for Vista.
To shrink the existing partition you can use any Partition Manager but on the
Vista installation disk there is an utility just to do this task:DISKPART and
I'm going to show you how to use it.
Beware that what we going to do,if something goes wrong,could
end up in a loss of data ,or even in not to be able to boot from the existing Windows
XP and to have to install it again.Therefore ,before you start, it's absolutely
necessary that you back up the entire Hard Drive or ,at least,all your important
files and documents,and make sure to have your old Windows XP installation CD .
- You must boot from the Vista installation disk .When the first window appears click Install Now (see Fig.1)
- On the second screen click Don't get the latest Update(see
Fig.2)
-
On the third you have to type your product key but,instead press Shift+F10
and a Command Prompt appears.
- Type
diskpart and press enter,you are now entered the diskpart
utility.
- Type list volume and press enter ,this gives you all
the partitions or volumes,you should know on which one Windows XP is
installed.
- Type Select Volume 0 (where 0 is the number of the
volume you want to shrink)You get "Volume 0 is the selected volume"
- Type
shrink .The process starts and volume 0 (the selected one)will be reduced of 50 %
if the existing partition has enough free space.
- Close the Command Prompt and keep going with Vista installation
following the instruction on screen.
When you get to the screen where you have to choose where installing
Vista you should have a Volume C: marked as primary and an Unallocated space
that you'll select and from now on Vista installation will do all the
job.
When the installation is finished and you start your computer you'll have 2
Operating Systems to choose (see Fig.3) from.Vista will be the default and will start in 30
seconds automatically,or you can choose Windows XP with the down arrow and press
enter if you want to boot from that one.
If you want to change the default booting order read this
tutorial
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If you purchased a new computer with Vista already installed and running on
it and you are finding some hassle in getting your old programs running on
Vista, you can install Windows XP on the same computer, provided you have the
installation CD.Here how to do it
Same advice : before you start doing this task, backup the
whole drive where you going to install Windows XP.
Check with your new computer manufacturer whether all the drivers
are available for Windows XP,download them and burn them on a CD,also make sure
if the warranty, if any, is voided if you install
another Operating System on the same machine.
Windows XP can't be installed on the same partition where you have
Vista, therefore if you have 2 or more partitions ,it's not a problem but if you
have only one volume, C ,you'll have to make space where to create a new
partition for Windows XP.Here how to make a new partition, skip this part if you
already have 2 partitions.
Figure
4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
- Click Start Button and Right-click Computer
- Choose Manage
-
Click on Disk management (see fig 4)
-
On the next window(see Fig.5) right-click the drive you want to
resize, in your case there is only on drive, and choose Shrink Volume
from the dropdown menu.
-
Next enter the space of disk to be shrunk, if you have a big Hard drive I
suggest at least 15 Gig, for Windows, programs and some data. Click
Shrink
-
When the process is finished, you have a section of your drive with a green
strip at the top and the amount of free space inside,(see fig.6)
-
Right-click on the partition with the green strip and choose New Simple Volume.(see
Fig.7)
- The Simple volume wizard starts, you can accept all the default and
change the label when you get to do it, and call this drive WindowsXP.The format
process may take few minutes to finish depending on the size of the partition.
At
the end you'll have a new formatted volume where you can install Windows XP.
-
Go to start/Computer and you can see the new volume labeled WindowsXP (D:)(see
Fig 8)
Tips
- Before you start, insert a CD or DVD in your drive,so you can change the
drive default letter ( D:) to (E:) so you can assign (D:) to the new
partition.It doesn't really make any difference to the functionality of your
drives but it looks better and less confusing .
You now ready to install Windows XP ,but when the installation is complete,though,you won't be able to
choose which system to boot , because XP uses a file "Boot.ini" to boot
and that system doesn't recognize the new Vista Boot file,therefore ,after the
installation itself you'll have to do few more steps to fix the problem and
bring up Vista again.Here all the steps you have to follow.
Figure
9
Figure
10
Figure
11
Figure
12
- Insert your XP installation CD into the drive and reboot your
computer to install XP.Don't forget on which partition you have to install it.
- When the installation is complete,insert the Vista CD in the drive and
reboot your computer from the CD
-
On the first screen click on repair your computer and not on Install Now
(See Fig 9)
-
You now have to choose which Vista installation to repair but you should have
only one,so click Next
-
On the next screen choose Startup Repair,and this automatically fixes the
problem with the missing bootloader.Click Finish and the system will boot into
Vista this time.
-
At this point to have the choice to boot from Windows XP or Vista you need to
download and install EasyBCD that
will do the job.You can download it
Here
-
Install the program and launch it.Click on Add remove Entries
-
On Add an Entry click on Windows tab and select Windows NT2k
/XP/2k3 from the dropdown menu and select the drive where you installed XP ,type
Windows XP in the Name box and click Add (see Fig.11)
- If you have done everything right,when you reboot you should have the
option to choose which OS to boot from (see Fig 12)
Tips
- If you still having problems to get the choice to dual boot like in fig.12,
try to visit the
easyBCD help page where you can find detailed explanations about this topic.
Figure
13
Figure
14
You can easily change the default booting following these steps
- Boot from Vista and right-click Computer and Properties
from the dropdown menu (see Fig.13)
- On Startup and Recovery click on Settings
(see Figure 13)
-
On the next window click on the dropdown menu and choose which operating system
you want your computer to boot by default and click OK.
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