Dual-Boot Vista/XP Pro Laptop

remus808

Ok so a friend just got a Vista laptop for college. However, the college insist on XP Pro as the OS of choice. But he still likes Vista for home use.

So i'm thinking a dual boot is a good idea here. I'v no experience of Vista though. I was thinking of going about it like so:

1. Creating an image of the laptop as is, with Vista, onto a CD (he has no Vista CD)
2. Formatting the HD
3. Partitioning it into 2, one for XP, one for Vista.
4. Installing XP into one partition, and the Vista image onto another

Anyone care to point out any mistakes i'v made or problems I might come up against? It's basic but sounds like it'l work to me. But again, I'v no experience with Vista so please correct me..

robbie1876

I followed this tutorial and it worked for me:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

No need to remove Vista from the laptop at all. The only problem I had was to do with the ntldr file, to which the answer to the problem is well documented in the notes on that page.

Good luck!

RoyalMarine

advantages for both methods.
if you dont remove vista, i dont think there's any way to create a partition on the hard drive.

if you dont create the partition, and have both operating systems on the same, if one does fail and crash, and it needed to be formatted, then you loose both versions.

if you have a partition and install xp on one, and vista on the other, then at least you know 1 will work if something happens.

remus808

robbie1876 wrote:

I followed this tutorial and it worked for me:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

No need to remove Vista from the laptop at all. The only problem I had was to do with the ntldr file, to which the answer to the problem is well documented in the notes on that page.

Good luck!

Cheers thanks for that, that tutorial was great help- and the dual-boot worked perfectly!