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Hi folks,

Am dual booting 32bit XP and 32bit Vista. On my old AMD motherboard I could
disable a controler and install each system independently. With this new
Intel Gigabit MB that is not an option. However, I would still like to have
both OS on the 'puter but not have them dual booting. In other words if I
choose disk 0 then it is XP that boots, and with disk 1 it is Vista. That
way, for example, if I wanted to go with 64bit Vista I could unplug the XP
Drive (yes I know, should have done this in the first place) and should
there be a foul up I could always boot up XP and still do my tasks.

Hopefully, I am making sense - just don't want to take any chances with two
operating systems that are running well but unfortunately crippled if one or
the other HDs goes down or is changed.

Thanks for any thoughts...

BTW, have Vista Boot 3.3 but do not see a "safe" way of accomplishing what I
need.

Len

If you are saying that you have the XP boot files on the Vista drive, and
therefore can't boot from the XP drive, just COPY the ntldr, ntdetect.com
and boot.ini files from the Vista drive onto the XP drive (root) and change
the boot.ini to point to the XP drive. If it will be booting from that
drive, you would probably need to change rdisk to 0

"Len" <> wrote in message
news:1B47F985-FE34-4D20-9241-...
> Hi folks,
>
> Am dual booting 32bit XP and 32bit Vista. On my old AMD motherboard I
> could disable a controler and install each system independently. With
> this new Intel Gigabit MB that is not an option. However, I would still
> like to have both OS on the 'puter but not have them dual booting. In
> other words if I choose disk 0 then it is XP that boots, and with disk 1
> it is Vista. That way, for example, if I wanted to go with 64bit Vista I
> could unplug the XP Drive (yes I know, should have done this in the first
> place) and should there be a foul up I could always boot up XP and still
> do my tasks.
>
> Hopefully, I am making sense - just don't want to take any chances with
> two operating systems that are running well but unfortunately crippled if
> one or the other HDs goes down or is changed.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts...
>
> BTW, have Vista Boot 3.3 but do not see a "safe" way of accomplishing what
> I need.
>
> Len

"Len" <> wrote in message
news:1B47F985-FE34-4D20-9241-...
> Hi folks,
>
> Am dual booting 32bit XP and 32bit Vista. On my old AMD motherboard I
> could disable a controler and install each system independently. With
> this new Intel Gigabit MB that is not an option. However, I would still
> like to have both OS on the 'puter but not have them dual booting. In
> other words if I choose disk 0 then it is XP that boots, and with disk 1
> it is Vista. That way, for example, if I wanted to go with 64bit Vista I
> could unplug the XP Drive (yes I know, should have done this in the first
> place) and should there be a foul up I could always boot up XP and still
> do my tasks.

The way I did this was to go into BIOS and make a drive the Startup Drive
( I have 3 physical SATA drives). Install OS(es) on that drive. Reboot
into BIOS and make a different drive the startup drive. Install different
OS(es) on that drive.

When booting I hit F12 to select the startup drive. One drive will get me
Vista 32 (or Server 2008 or OS X), other drive will get me Vista 64. They
have separate boot files so if one drive dies the other will still boot.

Your thought process is good - in a dual boot setup, Vista installs boot
files on the XP Partition, or drive. If you lose that partiiton, or drive,
you will be unable to boot into Vista without modifyning the BCD Store.

Bob's solution may be applicable.

"John Barnes" <> wrote in message
news:...
> If you are saying that you have the XP boot files on the Vista drive, and
> therefore can't boot from the XP drive, just COPY the ntldr, ntdetect.com
> and boot.ini files from the Vista drive onto the XP drive (root) and
> change the boot.ini to point to the XP drive. If it will be booting from
> that drive, you would probably need to change rdisk to 0
>
> "Len" <> wrote in message
> news:1B47F985-FE34-4D20-9241-...
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Am dual booting 32bit XP and 32bit Vista. On my old AMD motherboard I
>> could disable a controler and install each system independently. With
>> this new Intel Gigabit MB that is not an option. However, I would still
>> like to have both OS on the 'puter but not have them dual booting. In
>> other words if I choose disk 0 then it is XP that boots, and with disk 1
>> it is Vista. That way, for example, if I wanted to go with 64bit Vista I
>> could unplug the XP Drive (yes I know, should have done this in the first
>> place) and should there be a foul up I could always boot up XP and still
>> do my tasks.
>>
>> Hopefully, I am making sense - just don't want to take any chances with
>> two operating systems that are running well but unfortunately crippled if
>> one or the other HDs goes down or is changed.
>>
>> Thanks for any thoughts...
>>
>> BTW, have Vista Boot 3.3 but do not see a "safe" way of accomplishing
>> what I need.
>>
>> Len
>