Can't dual boot Vista Home Premium & Win XP Pro

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"If you can still boot into windows XP, Vista has put the boot files
somewhere else. "

Actually, the only way I can boot into Win XP is to restore the Acronis
Image that I created just prior to attempting to install Vista. I may try
to install Vista over the XP OS just to see whether it would work, with the
assumption that I will restore an XP image soon after. I also find that I
may not have the latest BIOS; what is installed is dated 06-01-2006. whereas
there is a Beta BIOS created 01-04-2007 and might have been intended to
facilitate Vista, so I may try an update. I can always revert back to the
earlier BIOS if the Beta version doesn't help. I'm always a bit leery of
Betas.
 
Sounds like a good plan as you have intelligently made provisions to restore
if you have problems. The fact that they have left the newer beta BIOS on
their website for 6 months indicates they are not having problems reported.
If many had reported problems with it, it would have been updated or
removed. Do however make a backup or your current BIOS before updating.
 
Incidentally, if you try installing on the K drive in the future, if you
would just change the boot order in the BIOS to have the second HD first in
the boot order, you can save time by not having to reinstall XP each time.
This would write the boot files to the active partition on the second drive.
 
Two things,
First I updated the BIOS with the "Beta" version, however it turned out to
be the same BIOS already installed.
Second I changed the HD boot order, putting the drive with K: partition
first. Then reformatted the partition and reinstalled Vista but ONCE AGAIN I
got the now familiar "Disk Read Error". It must have also written something
to the C: drive, as I still had to reinstall the latest Acronis image in
order to boot into XP.
 
Do you per chance have no active partition on the second drive? How hard
would it be, with the second drive first in boot priority, to unplug the
first drive during the install. If it is SATA, you could then hot plug it in
 
Exactly how many hard drives do you have in your system? What type are they
(SATA or IDE) How are they connected (to native M/B ports or to add-in
ports)? What drive locations is each in (drive 0, drive 1 etc)? How many
active partitions are on your drives and where are they located? What about
logical partitions?

There is too much that you have not told - in one place. It is hard to get
the total picture in drips and drabs.

Use mine as an example:

Drive 0 = SATA
1st partition (primary active NTFS) = 30 gig for Vista
2nd partition (primary inactive NTFS) = 20 gig for Windows XP
3rd partition (primary inactive DOS) = 70 meg for DOS
4th partition (extended - for logical partitions)
logical partition D: = 140 gig
logical partition E: = 140 gig

Drive 1 = SATA
1st partition = extended (for 141 gig logical partition F:)

Drive 2 = IDE
1st partition = extended (for 141 gig logical partition G:)

Now please map out yours.


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Hi, Richard
I agree that a comprehensive list of drive properties would be helpful. I
would add some things:
1) I see so many references to loading SATA drivers that it might also be
helpful to know whether SATA drives are visible to DOS partitioning software
like Microsoft's Fdisk or Norton Ghost's Gdisk.exe when the system is
booted from a W98 boot floppy/CD. I'm assuming that if they are visible to
Fdisk or Gdisk from a DOS boot then SATA drivers is not an issue since they
are not needed.
2) Add whether partitions are hidden or not hidden. Seems kind of dangerous
to expose your Vista and XP systems to each other by not hiding one from the
other, although it might keep the drive letters consistent no matter which
partition is active.

I think that you meant to specify the format type (Fat16 or Fat32), rather
than OS, in "(primary inactive DOS)".

-Paul Randall
 
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