Okay this has been my experience with setting up daul boot for Windows
Vista and XP. When one works the other does not work and vise versa.
My issue is compounded by the fact that I have a Toshiba Laptop with
Recovery Disks instead of an actual Windows OS Disk. First step I did
to finally enable dual boot on my factory laptop was to use a windows
98 boot disk to remove all partitions on my hard drive. You can do
this with Fdisk or just use low level format utility from your hard
drive manufacture. How would you know who made your hard drive? Just
go into the bios where usually it will show that information, or more
simple way is to go into Device manager and click on Disk Drives
Category and see who makes your hard drive. Caution some manufactures
never give you a full restore set. An HP laptop is a good example,
but they let you make ONE SET of recovery disks from their D
partition. Baring any hacks you will get one chance to do this using
either CDRW disks which means you have to use numerous disks, 2 DVD RW
disks, or 1 Blue Ray disk. I would strongly recommend having the full
recovery set before beginning. If you have just one disk its highly
likely that disk is used only to point your system to a hidden
partition on your hard drive during the restore process.
I first created my "C" and "D" partitions using my Windows XP disk.
Then I installed XP on the D partition. When XP is installed open up
My Computer and click on the C drive. Then go to Tools Folder
Options and View make sure you click show Hidden Files, uncheck hide
known extension types, and uncheck hide protected system files. Now
you should be able to see the boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM, and the ntldr
files. Copy(Not move or cut) those files to the D partition. Lastly
Insert the recovery disk 1 reboot and to begin the Windows Vista
install. When Vista is up and running most likely you will not longer
be able to boot into XP. Do not worry about that. In Vista copy
those files from the D partition that is the Boot.ini, ntldr, and
NTDETECT.COM to the root of C Drive. In Windows Vista the order COULD
be different. In other words the C drive could be D and vice versa.
However, in the Vista drive you will have a users folder, this folder
is the same as the Documents and Settings folder used in Windows XP.
Remember the files we copied should be on the partition containing XP
and we should copy those files to the Windows Vista Drive.
The reason we at first copied the files over to D was that most likely
the Windows Vista Recovery disks formatted C during the process
deleting all files on C including the ones that have the boot record
for XP. Next you can download a program to modify the Windows Vista
Boot Loader. Unlike Windows XP its not as simple as editing a
boot.ini file. There is BCDEDIT that is built into Vista but I would
recommend EasyBCD. When you open this program, (which is FREE with No
Trial period) You might have to Add the Windows XP partition. But
there is much documentation on how to use this simple program.
Basically you want to make sure that in this program that the Windows
XP points to the same partition as Vista. This is a link to a good
how to.
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
Basically what happens is the Vista boot loader points to the drive
were the XP boot files are. The boot.ini file will then point to the
location of the Windows XP install. For example his is my sample
boot.ini file.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
Notice that near the end it say partition(1) that usually means my XP
install is on the C drive.
Had it said partition(2) that would most likely mean my partition is
on the D drive. This error is spawned by the Vista boot loader.
"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might
be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. .........
3. ....................
If you do not have this disc, contact your system
administrator.........................."
In my case two things caused this one in the EasyBCD under boot the
Manage Bootloader tab your Windows XP save to option is not the same
location as the Windows Vista install (C Partition) or you are missing
the boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM, and ntldr files from your C drive. Hope
this long instruction set helps. It worked for me.
