Need advice on setting up a dual boot vista / xp?

I have just about finished setting up, tweaking, etc. a new Vista pc.
I would like to ( for a short time ) set it up so that my xp
installation is still available should I run into any unforseen
software issues.
The XP installation is on another pc so I can take the drive out of it
( all drives are SATA if that matters) and add it to my new one. I
have no experience at all with dual booting so I'm not sure where to
go from here.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
Gary

>The XP installation is on another pc so I can take the drive out of it
>( all drives are SATA if that matters) and add it to my new one. I
>have no experience at all with dual booting so I'm not sure where to
>go from here.

If the other liscence of XP is OEM you cannot do that according to EULA or
you are pirating.
Even if its retail and its ok with the EULA, many things might mess this
up.. since xp might just give you a blue screen or struggle trying to load
onto the new hardware.. It might work but it might not.
You will need to activate again....

anyway... if you have xp on a second disk you can boot the vista dvd, and do
a repair of the bootloader so it will detect XP and add it into the
bootloader.

algae wrote:
> I have just about finished setting up, tweaking, etc. a new Vista pc.
> I would like to ( for a short time ) set it up so that my xp
> installation is still available should I run into any unforseen
> software issues.


Normally, the older OS must be installed first unless you wish to
acquire and use some 3rd-party partition and boot management utility.
(In which case you have to follow the instructions provided by whatever
3rd party solution you select.) However, dual-booting is no longer
necessary in most situations.

Why not download a Virtual Machine application, such as Microsoft's
VirtualPC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp?) or
Innotek's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) and run WinXP and your
legacy applications within a virtual computer? Both are free and work
with Vista. (Caveat: Microsoft does not support the use of VirtualPC
2007 on Vista Home editions, but several people have reported that it
works just fine.) The commercial product VMWare is another alternative.


> The XP installation is on another pc so I can take the drive out of it
> ( all drives are SATA if that matters) and add it to my new one. I
> have no experience at all with dual booting so I'm not sure where to
> go from here.


This method can be made to work, but it's not particularly
straight-forward. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to try this for
his/her first attempt at dual-booting. Once the hard drive bearing
WinXP has been "transplanted," you'll need to perform a repair installation.

Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed OEM
installations are BIOS-locked to a specific motherboard chipset and
therefore are *not* transferable to a new motherboard - check yours
before starting), unless the new motherboard is virtually identical
(same chipset, same IDE controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one
on which the WinXP installation was originally performed, you'll need to
perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at the very least:

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directo...;EN-US;Q315341

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with WinXP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with
licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point.
You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If
you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a
Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style
foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it,
is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any
old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it
"tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the
reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable
than the Win9x group.

As always when undertaking such a significant change, back up any
important data before starting.

This will also probably require re-activation, unless you have a
Volume Licensed version of WinXP Pro installed. If it's been more than
120 days since you last activated that specific Product Key, you'll most
likely be able to activate via the Internet without problem. If it's
been less, you might have to make a 5 minute phone call.

Then you'll have to repair the Vista boot files. This KB Article (not
for the faint of heart) explains how to repair the Vista boot process
after installing WinXP:

Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of
the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529


--

Bruce Chambers

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