How to avoid overwriting XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Colin Barnhorst
  • Start date Start date
I know were to get some 8 inch floppies at work. I work in a Tape Library for Boeing with 3590 (VTS) tapes, 3480 tapes and even really old 3420 reel to reel tapes (1950's technology). One of the pieces of equipment used to maintain the 3480 floor drive units runs 8 inch floppy disks.

William
This would be good news if it wasn't coming on 8 inch floppies.
 
Grab a bunch and sell it on ebay.
I know were to get some 8 inch floppies at work. I work in a Tape Library for Boeing with 3590 (VTS) tapes, 3480 tapes and even really old 3420 reel to reel tapes (1950's technology). One of the pieces of equipment used to maintain the 3480 floor drive units runs 8 inch floppy disks.

William
This would be good news if it wasn't coming on 8 inch floppies.
 
I doubt it but it's not impossible. My roots are Amish and trace back to
Pennsylvania. I mutinied, if there is such a word.
 
Leave the boot order the same as when you installed Vista.


Download the utility recommended by Colin several times, he says:
You can download this tool from http://www.vistabootpro.org/intro.php. It
is free

Then you add a legacy system using the tool.

Copy the boot.ini and ntdetect.com and ntldr to the drive with the Vista
boot folder from your former system drive.

Modify the boot.ini to reflect the current position in boot order of your XP
system.
(you can play with it (if you can) or use the XP Recovery Console, bootcfg
to /add (your legacy systems) or /rebuild the boot.ini to get it correct.

This will give you a first boot with a choice between vista and the legacy
you added, and if you chose the legacy, you will get the boot.ini menu or go
straight to the xp system if you only have one system (I have several)
(either add or rebuild will result in extra entries to the boot menu, so
make sure you use names you will recognise when you see them I personally
add the drive and partition number to the description 0-1, 1-1 etc.)

Set the timeouts to your preferences.

Clean up the boot.ini from system properties in XP
 
I figured that because you are named after Menno Simons. Arlen is the choir
director at my wife's church (First Mennonite Church of Denver). She sings
in his choir. I am somewhat apostate myself. Sorry, I couldn't resist
asking.
 
I see someone else has done the math. I come up with approximately 2284
floppies.

And I thought O/S 2 was bad!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
With my luck, disk #2276 would be missing... :-)
It was bad enough with Windows 95 when disk #26 was missing.
Click to expand...

At least if it's missing you can avoid beginning the installation. It's a
lot worse if you do have all your disks, but #26 gives you a read error...
 
To Art Garland Snr. Maybe I'm the Colin you were looking for. You need a
program called VistaBootpro. With this you can modify the boot system so as
to be able to access both your Vista partitions and your XP partitions.
Here's an example:-


There are a total of 3 OSes installed into the boot manager.
Current timeout before default boots: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Vista RC1 Colin

Entry # 1

Name: Vista RC1 Colin
BCD ID: {current}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry # 2

Name: Vista RC1 Edwin
BCD ID: {763be11e-4501-11db-b25d-00508dd97b58}
Boot Drive: H:
Windows Drive: H:
System Bootloader: \windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry # 3

Name: XP English/Spanish
BCD ID: {763be120-4501-11db-b25d-00508dd97b58}
Boot Drive: F:
Windows Drive:
System Bootloader: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

This allows me to boot to either of 2 Vista installations and the XP
English/Spanish takes me to my original dual-boot XP installations. You can
do this even if you installed the XP after the Vista (which is the opposite
way round to Microsoft's recommendation).

Colin (C as opposed to B)
 
Back
Top