How do I dual boot my computer to run Windows XP and Vista?

Question To begin with, I am not totally literate when it comes to knowing what goes on "inside." I would like to know if it is possible to partition two different operating systems on the same computer. I am using Windows XP, but I would like to try Vista. I have heard good and bad things about it, so I'm reluctant to dispose of XP unless I'm convinced that I really like it. Can you please give me some detailed directions as to how I can accomplish this? Thank you.

Answer
it's not only possible but it is done VERY often. But you may need to get some help in actually doing it.

What you want is called "dual boot" (or, for more than two OS', "multi-boot"). As long as you are doing no more than two OS, you can do it with just the OS' (e.g. software on the OS CDs), providing that you can repartition your hard drive into [at least] two partitions; while you can have two OS' on the same hard drive, they generally have to be in separate partitions. If the hard drive is currently fully used (fully partitioned), you may have to do some repartitioning first, so you may need "Partition Magic" or a similar partitioning software. Then you can go after setting up dual boot. The general process is to install the older OS first, then install the newer OS in a separate, blank partition (so you might have XP in C: and Vista in D:).

However, with XP and Vista, there is nasty catch: Due to a conflict between how XP and Vista work, if either Operating System sees the partion containing the other, there will be some corruption of the "other" OS. The most serious consequence of this is that the System Restore function will be lost for both OS', and there may be some other , less serious consequences. The choices basically are to live with this, or to arrange to "hide" the partition containing whichever OS you did not boot into (whenever you reboot you will be given a menu of the two OS' and the chance to select which one to boot up from). If you choose the "hide" approach (probably best), you will need a 3rd party "boot manager" since the Microsoft boot manager doesn't implement this function. If you do a web search for "dual boot" or "boot manager", or similar, you will get a lot of hits that should help you to both select a boot manager (some are free, some are not) and give you instructions for setting things up.

What I usually recommend for people setting up dual boot is this:

-Oldest OS on C:
-Newer OS on D:
-All data for both OS' (including "My Documents") on E:

Setting this up takes some effort to get all the programs installed under either or both OS' to store their data on E: (including making a "My Documents" folder on E: and having both OS' recognize it as THE "My Documents" folder), but it gives you the flexibility to use either OS and see the same data. System Restore won't work on E: if you do this (since both OS' will, by definition, see that partition), but system restore doesn't deal with DATA anyway, it only deals with system files such as drivers and the registry, which won't be on that 3rd data partition.

As to specific instructions, again, that can get pretty lengthy, and the best advice I can give you is to do a web search. There are plenty of sites that do have step-by-step instructions, but the length of the instructions makes it kind of prohibitive to actually put them directly into this post.

Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives" during Windows XP Installation

One of the most popular topics among our readers is installing Windows XP on your new Windows Vista computer - sometimes for compatibility reasons, but also because a lot of people just don't like Vista very much.

The problem that people keep running into left and right is getting to the point where XP starts to install and getting the message "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". This error happens because your new computer has a storage controller that isn't supported natively in XP, usually an SATA (Serial ATA) controller.


If you don't have a floppy drive in your computer (who does anymore), then you'll need to use a process called slip-streaming to integrate the storage drivers into your XP installation CD.

It should go without saying that this is an advanced topic, so proceed with caution.

Creating a Custom XP Install

We'll use a software called nLite to create a new XP install cd, so you'll first need to download and install it. Once it starts up, you'll be prompted for your Windows installation, so you'll want to click the Browse button.



First you'll be prompted for the "Windows installation", which really means your XP install CD. Find it and select the root of the installation, and then click OK to go to the next dialog.



Next you'll be prompted on where you want to save the temporary files used during the slip-streaming process. I chose to create a new directory and called it XPISO, but you can put it wherever you'd like. I just recommend to use a new directory.



nLite will copy all the necessary files off the XP installation and into the temporary folder. When it's done, you'll see all the information on which version it is.














Hit the next button until you come to this screen, where you can select what options you want. Select "Drivers" and then "Bootable ISO".



Side note: You can select any of the other options if you'd like. nLite will let you bundle updates, set tweaks or automatically remove components from the installation, but that all goes beyond the scope of this article.

Hit the next button until you get to the screen for selecting drivers. If you click the Insert button, you can choose between adding a single driver or adding a folder of drivers. Since we'll just be loading a single driver, you can choose that option, but you might want to first read the section below about finding drivers for XP.








Browse to the directory where you extracted the driver files, and then select Open. Note that it doesn't really matter which of the *.inf files you choose, because it will select all files in the folder anyway.



nLite will prompt you to select your driver. If you don't know which exact one it is, you can either use Device Manager in Vista to find the exact model, or you can just select all of them. Just be careful not to select a 64-bit driver if you are using 32-bit, or the wrong OS version.



I would recommend including both Storage and Network drivers, as those are the most common drivers that are missing in XP.



Once you proceed to the next screen, now we can finally finish the process. You can choose to directly burn the cd here, or you can select Create Image to create an ISO file that you can burn to a CD using whatever burning tool you have.

Note: If you chose to create an ISO, make sure to use the "Make ISO" button before you click Next.





At this point you can burn the ISO image to a CD, and then start your XP installation process.

Finding Drivers for XP

The best place to search for drivers for your hardware is at the manufacturer's support website. The only problem is that almost every manufacturer seems to distribute their drivers in floppy disk image form, even though the computer they are for doesn't have a floppy drive. Guess nobody has alerted them to get with the program.

We can still extract the drivers using an application called WinImage. Let's run through a quick example… Here you can see the Intel SATA controller driver for my HP computer.



I downloaded and ran the executable, which extracted a file called f6flpy32.exe into a temporary directory. Don't bother trying to run this one, because it'll just prompt you for a floppy drive.



So how to get the drivers out of this file? There are a few options that you can try, depending on how the manufacturer packed the files.

* You can use Winimage to extract them, which is a shareware software, but you can use it during the trial period for free.
* You can try and use WinRar to extract the file. In many instances this will extract a *.flp file, which you can mount in a VMware virtual machine or potentially with some ISO mounting software.
* Some drivers will allow you to automatically extract into a directory. You'll have to try it and see what happens.
* Other methods? If you've got other ideas, leave them in the comments and I'll add them to this list.

Here's the list of files that Winimage can handle, which is quite a lot



Start WinImage and then open the file, and you should see the contents. Just extract them to a folder, preferably with a useful name so you can remember it later.



Good luck with your installation, and be sure to leave any .
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