Tutorial to Dual Booting Windows XP and Windows Vista
Version 0.50

This article shows how to install Windows XP with Windows Vista already installed. No data will be lost, no extra software is needed and you can choose which operating system to boot everytime you power on your system.

DISCLAIMER: Proceed at your own risk! The information here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I will not be held responsible if this document causes your computer to explode or burst into flames. In real serious terms, if any corruption of data, hardware damage or any other kind of damage/losses/etc. arises from the use of this document, I will not be responsible for it. If you don't like this, please don't read any further.

Is this document intended for you?

1. You want to install Windows XP in a computer that has only Windows Vista installed
2. You have made a backup of your system in case something goes wrong

Quick Directs

1. What is Needed
2. Preparation of XP Installation Drive
3. Installing Windows XP
4. Reinstating Windows Vista Back
5. Putting Back XP in the Boot Menu

1) What is Needed

1. Vista Installation DVD
2. XP Installation Disc (preferably SP2)
3. A drive with at least 5GB free space

Assumptions

1. This guide assumes you want to install Windows XP into Drive D. If you want to install to another drive, substitute the appropriate drive letter for D.
2. This guide assumes Windows Vista is installed in Drive C

2) Preparation of XP Installation Drive

This guide will assume that you will be installing XP to Drive D.

1. Click Start
2. Click Computer
3. Under Hard Drives, there should be one labelled "Local Disk C:"
   
   
   If you don't have a Drive D, you must create a new partition
4. If you don't have a Drive D with at least 5GB free space, you need to create a partition as below.

Creating a Partition

Skip this part if you already have a Drive D with at least 5GB of free space.

1. Click Start
2. On the right column, right-click Computer on the left column
3. Click Manage
4. Vista should pop a User Account Control box, click Continue
5. Computer Management window opens
6. In the left column, expand Storage to reveal Disk Management.
7. Click Disk Management
   
   
   Disk Management
8. Right-click the shaded area (or the area labelled C:)
9. Click Shrink Volume...
10. In "Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB", enter the amount of space in MegaBytes that you want to dedicate for Windows XP. We recommend at least 5GB (that's 5,000 MegaBytes).
    
    
    
    If you are planning to use XP as your main operating system, you may want to dedicate more space for the drive as the process will be harder after installation of XP. Remember to ensure that Vista's drive has sufficient space left for its own use (at least 15GB)
11. Click Shrink
    A new 'Unallocated' partition is created beside C drive
    
12. Right-click the Unallocated partition
13. Click New Simple Volume...
14. Click Next 2 times
15. Note the drive letter assigned under "Assign the following drive letter". In our case, it is E as the letter D is already taken up by the CD-ROM drive. We will need to fix this later on. Click Next.
16. Enter a name for the drive under "Volume Label". You may want to name it WINXP.
17. Place a checkmark for "Perform a quick format"
    
18. Click Next
19. Click Finish
    The new drive will be formatted and made ready to be used

Changing Drive Letters

Note: Skip this part if your Drive D already points to a valid hard drive partition and not to a CD-ROM drive.

Our new partition is now Drive E. For cosmetics sake, we prefer the new drive to be Drive D. If you are fine (or require it to be such for some compatibility reason) Drive D to be the CD-ROM drive and E being the Windows XP drive, you can skip this part.

1. In your task bar, close all programs except Computer Management
2. At Computer Management, with Disk Management selected on the left, right-click the CD-ROM (D:) and click Change Drive Letter and Paths...
3. Click Change...
4. Under "Assign the following drive letter", select K (or any other letter besides D)
5. Click OK
6. Click OK for the warning that appears
7. Right-click the newly created partition labelled E: and click Change Drive Letter and Paths...
8. Click Change...
9. Under "Assign the following drive letter", select D
10. Click OK
11. Click OK for the warning that appears
12. Right-Click the CD-ROM (K:) and click Change Drive Letter and Paths...
13. Click Change...
14. Under "Assign the following drive letter", select E (or any other letter besides D)
15. Click OK
16. Click OK for the warning that appears
    
    
    The drives are now nicely assigned drive letters
    

At this point Drive D is ready for installation of Windows XP.

3) Installing Windows XP

1. Insert the Windows XP Installation Disc into your PC
2. Restart your PC and look for the "Press any key to boot from CD ..." prompt and quickly hit Enter. You only have a few seconds to do this before it proceeds to start Vista
   
   
   After you hit Enter, it will take sometime for Windows XP Setup to start
3. At the welcome page, press Enter
4. Accept the licence agreement by hitting F8
5. At the installation drive selection page, select the newly created D drive by hitting the down arrow in your keyboard. Do NOT select the default entry, which is Drive C.
   
   
   
6. Press Enter
7. In the file system selection page, highlight the option "Leave the current file system intact (no changes)". Do NOT highlight any of the Format options. This should be already selected by default.
8. At this stage, you are still able to boot Vista as per normal and you can terminate this tutorial safely if you wish.
   
   Proceeding to the next step will install XP and make Vista unbootable unless you follow the entire guide.
9. Press Enter
   
10. Windows XP will begin installing to Drive D. Follow prompts normally until you see the Windows Bliss (the trademark wallpaper) .

4) Reinstating Windows Vista Back

At this stage, you should have completed installing Windows XP to Drive D. You would have noticed that you can only boot into Windows XP now.

We need to fix Vista back together with XP and this is where the Vista installation disc comes in

1. Insert the Vista Boot DVD and restart your PC
2. Restart your PC and look for the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD . . ." prompt and quickly hit Enter. You only have a few seconds to do this before it proceeds to start XP
   
   
   Press any key to boot from CD or DVD . . .
   
3. Click Next at the "Install Windows" screen.
4. Click Repair your computer at the bottom left of the window
   Vista Setup searches for Vista installations
5. After the search is completed, click Next
   
   
   System Recovery
6. Click Startup Repair
   Vista Setup will attempt to repair the boot sector
7. Click Finish

5) Putting Back XP in the Boot Menu

After the restart, you should be back in VIsta now. Unfortunately, now you cannot access Windows XP. Here's how to put back XP into the boot menu.

Option 1: Run a Batch File (Automated)

1. Right-click this link and Save Target As
2. Save to your desktop
3. Insert the Windows Vista Setup disc to your E drive
4. Go to your Desktop.
5. Right-Click the file, and click Run as administrator

Note: The third command may give an error which can be safely ignored.

Option 2: Run Commands Manually

1. Insert the Windows Vista Setup disc to your E drive
2. Click Start
3. Type CMD and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter (press and hold Ctrl, press and hold Shift, press and hold Enter, release all)
4. Vista should pop a User Account Control box, click Continue
5. You should see a command prompt.
   
   After typing each line below, press Enter on your keyboard. Do not copy and paste, you must type it out. Note that we are assuming Drive E to contain your Vista installation disc and Drive C to contain the Vista installation.
   
   

   cd %windir%
   
   e:\boot\bootsect.exe -NT60 All
   
   %windir%\system32\Bcdedit -create {ntldr} -d "XP"
   
   %windir%\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=c:
   
   %windir%\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
   
   %windir%\system32\Bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast

   Note: The third command may give an error which can be safely ignored.
   
   
   The DOS Commands and the responses

That's it. Restart your system, and a menu will appear to ask your choice of operating system to boot up.

If you get errors like "The boot configuration data store could not be opened" - you are not running the file / command prompt as a administrator.

Revisions

1. July 26 2008 - v0.5
   • First Release to the public in Bootstrike.Com

Last Updated 26th June 2008.

Errors? Omissions? Need Help? Know something? Post your queries in the Windows Vista Discussion Forum.

This document is Copyright(©) 2001-2008 by G.Ganesh.

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