Many users of Windows Vista are finding that they miss the utility of Windows XP, or they find that Vista is incompatible with many of their favorite programs that ran easily on Windows XP. Luckily it is possible to create a dual-boot program so you can have both Windows XP and Vista installed on your system. Even if you have a PC that came packaged with Windows Vista this doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice between platforms. So this tutorial is for PCs with preinstalled Vista.
Before you begin you should check if your warranty forbids a dual-boot system. Some computer manufacturers will no longer cover PCs that have a partition and a second operating system installed. Hardware that came with your Vista system may not be compatible with Windows XP as well.
Any dual-boot system requires the creation of an addition partition in your hard drive. To create a partition you must go to My Computer, right click on it then Manage and finally choose Disk Management.
You will see an image showing your primary hard drive and its partition/s, which is usually blue. Right click on the partition you wish to modify and select “Shrink Volume”, which will let you reduce the size of your primary partition. Then create your second partition where you will install Windows XP. You must remember to leave at least 10-20 G of additional space for programs on that partition and files, don’t simply make it large enough for Windows. Vista is still your primary operating system, so make sure to leave the majority of your hard drive space with that partition. And if you have your entire hard disc big enough you can create a third partition for video and other files and downloads. The typical example would be If you shrink Vista partition to 40-50G, leave for XP 30-40G and from the rest create a third partition.
Note: there can be some problems in resizing partition in Vista, it can be done with errors or simply these options are just grayed out. If this is the case you can use a third party programs like Acronis Disk Director to resize partition in Windows Vista or XP.
Next you can change the drive letter that you use for the CD-DVD drive. Right click on CD-DVD drive in the Disk Management area and choose “Change drive letter and paths” and rename your drive to E. You should click OK and make sure to choose to confirm all of these changes when you are asked.
Why do we do this, you wonder? This simply keeps your drive letters more organized and keeps all your hard drives in order. The drive letter D will be the name you will use for your second hard drive. If you don’t want to do it that’s fine, leave it as it is.
Create your new Partition
After you shrank you primary partition you’ll see black colored unallocated space, right click on it and choose “New simple volume.” This will open up a Windows wizard that will guide you through the basic creation process. Choose all of the default options up to the choice for a “Volume Label”. Label the volume “Windows XP” in order to easily identify which partition you will use for the installation. Choose “Quick Format” and continue with the wizard and the defaults.
Close all open programs and restart your computer now. This will ensure that all of the changes to your hard disk are incorporated into your Windows Vista system.
Congratulations, you have completed all of your preparations for your dual-boot system. Insert the Windows XP startup software and once again restart your system. Boot from the XP CD and follow the prompts to install Windows XP normally on the partition you just created. Then install all drivers as normally you would do. Now, when you restart your PC you will not see the boot menu and an option which operating system to load, instead it will boot normally with just created Windows XP. Why? Because XP doesn’t recognize Vista and XP’s bootloader was just installed into the MBR and Vista will no longer boot. What are we going to do about it?
In order to make Windows Vista bootable again we should reinstall Vista bootloader code to the MBR using Vista’s installation DVD. Just insert the DVD and boot your PC from it. Select “Repair your computer” when you prompted to install. It will search for installed Operating Systems and will come up with the Vista OS, don’t worry if you don’t see Windows XP there. Select Vista OS and press Next. The System Recovery Options screen will come up where you select the first option “Startup Repair”. Click Next and it will look and fix any startup problems Vista currently has, in our case is “something wrong with the bootloader”.
After it finishes it will give a log of what has been done, close it and press Finish. Now the PC will restart and boot with Vista. Now what?
Adding a Dual-Boot utility
Now you have to create a menu system so you can choose which operating system to use. Remember Vista can see XP but XP can not see Vista. So we will configure it from Vista OS. There are different methods of doing that - manual configuration (Vista made it quite complicated by entering and configuring BCD file) or through third party software like EasyBCD and VistaBootPro where it can be made in seconds.
After you install EasyBCD application press on “Add/Remove Entries” and under “Add an entry” select Windows tab and go to the drop down menu of “Version” section and select “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3”. Then enter name like “Windows XP Pro” then press on Add Entry and save.
So now when you restart the PC you will be presented with an option of 2 or more Operating Systems.
Or you can use VistaBootPro to do the same. Follow prompts and install the .NET Framework 2.00 as well. Once you install it start VistaBootPro and use it:)
Restart your computer entirely. You should now have the option to select the operating system that you want to boot to.
What to do if your computer (hp) does not come with a vista DVD. Just recovery disks.