Dual-Booting Win XP and Vista

Posted on May 4th, 2007 by Jason

4 Tweak It
Once Vista is installed, you can configure the Boot menu. But where earlier versions of Windows conveniently used the boot.ini file to store boot details, Vista uses the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store—bcdedit.exe from the command prompt—and this utility is stunningly unintuitive. You’re better off downloading VistaBootPro (www.vistabootpro.org) or EasyBCD (www.neosmart.net), both of which give you a GUI environment to work with.

Finally, Two Warnings
1 The BCD provides a more robust start-up environment for Windows, but the downside is that if you want a multiboot system, you must be sure to install Vista last. If you put Vista on a machine and install Windows XP afterward, Vista won’t start, because Boot.ini, which Win XP adds automatically, will render the BCD useless (although you can recover it by running the fixntfs.exe utility from within Win XP).

2 Even when your Win XP/Vista machine is happily dual-booting, one problem remains. As you work in Vista, the System Restore utility automatically creates restore points—and you can create them yourself—that let you launch the system in a previous state and recover from errors. But when you exit Vista and launch Win XP, the older OS deletes the Vista restore points.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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3 Responses to “Dual-Booting Win XP and Vista”

  1. XtraSalafy on 04 May 2007 at 7:36 pm #

    Extra RAM Isn’t a Waste in VistaDual-Booting Win XP and VistaVista Tip: Compatibility Files Tidy Up Your Places in Four Steps Type Better With TypeFaster

  2. maja_ldm on 09 Jun 2007 at 5:27 am #

    I’m quite an inept on this but.. could you suggest me on how to install Win XP on Vista if I can’t reboot from the XP cd, wich requires boot.ini?
    thank you

  3. german on 25 Jul 2007 at 9:12 am #

    hello, I was running windows vista but I really like my old windows xp.
    all my programs run better with xp, so I try to go back to the earlier version
    and I got to this point .
    the recovery cosole provides system repair and recovery functionality.
    type exit to quit the recovery console and restart the computer.
    1: c:\windows
    2: d:\minint
    3: d:\I386
    whick windows installation would you like to log onto so, I typed exit to quit becouse I did not know what to do and I try to start windows vista again
    but I could not do it anymore
    every time I try to start my computer it brings me to the same windows recovery
    could you suggest me on how to fix this problem.

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