Dual boot Vista and XP - make XP "appear" as C drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gerald
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G

Gerald

Is it possible to setup up dual booting Vista and Xp so that when XP boots it
then appears as C drive?

Currently my XP installation appears as F drive and hence some software that
wants to install to C does not run properly.

Is there someway of making it appear as a psuedo C drive even though it is
located on F drive?

Thanks in advance.
 
Yes, you can.
First, if your XP is already recognized as F:, it wouldn't be a good idea to
go tweaking it into C: (too many problems).
It is usual to install first XP only as C: and after that installing Vista.
That way drive letters would stay C: on both XP and Vista
 
Hi

Vista was installed first. I loaded XP 2nd as dual boot. I would prefer not
to reload both Os' if possible.

The Vista install software will wipe out everything and make one big
partition anyway. (notebook recovery disks - HP)

Is there some way to make both XP appear as C without reloading everything?
 
Gerald said:
Hi

Vista was installed first. I loaded XP 2nd as dual boot. I would prefer
not
to reload both Os' if possible.

The Vista install software will wipe out everything and make one big
partition anyway. (notebook recovery disks - HP)

Is there some way to make both XP appear as C without reloading
everything?
Click to expand...

There is, but it involves some serious tweaking with doubtful results. That
is if your XP is already F:, then all installed apps and OS would expect to
find contents on F:. I'm an instructor (MCT) in a training center so
sometimes I need dual boot configs.
I use Windows PE. You can download WAIK from Microsoft web and build your
own Windows PE bootable CD or DVD. On this DVD, I also copied GDISK32.EXE
that comes with Ghost Solution Suite. I use it to hide a partition and also
make it 'active' ie bootable. I made two simple script files (.bat) that
simply hide/unhide and activate/deactivate partition. The syntax for GDISK32
is very simple and you can put several commands into a text file.
The GDISK32.EXE commands look something like this.

GDISK32 0 /HIDE /P:1
GDISK32 0 /-HIDE /P:2
GDISK32 0 /ACT /P:2

This would hide partition 1 on disk 0, then unhide partition 2 and make it
active (bootable).

You may also need to tweak assignment of drive letters. Drive letters are
usualy assigned with DISKPART command.
You may also need to remove unwanted drive letters from the registry in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Sometimes you may lose your boot code from the Master Boot Record (MBR) or
from your partition. In that case, Windows PE tool BOOTSECT.EXE will come
handy.
You will use bootsect /nt52 to recreate WinXP boot sector
You will use bootsect /nt60 to recreate Vista boot sector.

Vista also keeps boot information in different (binary) format, unlike WinXP
that uses text file boot.ini.
You may find a smart little freeware VistaBootPRO from
http://www.vistabootpro.org/ a big time/life saver.

Good luck
 
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