LarryT wrote:
Doing the reverse will not work either - installing Vista 1st will work
but then XP cannot be installed because the OS will say "the OS
installed is
newer than the OS being attempted to install! Well, damn!
I'm running dual boot on dual hard drives. About one hour ago, I ordered
a
1TB drive, intending to transfer my Vista drive to it, then to install XP
Pro as a 2nd OS on the drive. I'm not happy to learn that MSFT has
prohibited me from doing that, for no good reason I can discern. I have a
XP
install disk but not Vista, only system restore disks for Vista.
Mitch.
The problem lies in the way the NT kernel boots from disk. The NT Boot
Loader lives in the Master Boot Record (MBR) and searches the C:\ drive
for
it's master configuration file "BOOT.INI." This file tells the NT Boot
Loader where it can find the version of NT you want to boot. Ergo, if you
install Vista to drive R:\ you *can* boot Vista from this drive but have
to
tell the Loader where to find it. If you install Vista first, then XP it
overwrites the BOOT.INI as well as the NT Boot Loader. So even if you add
Vista back to the BOOT.INI it's the wrong version of the Loader to
Bootstrap
the Vista version of the NT Kernel.
Also in the way many areas of the systems are shared. Ergo, when you
install
XP you get a "Program Files" folder that receives several sets of shared
libraries and files for all programs that XP will use. When you install
Vista you get a "Program Files" folder that receives several sets of
shared
..... err .... wait. So when you install Vista first and XP second, the XP
libraries are the ones most current, and as such Vista could potentially
have a problem with those that aren't stored in the System32 directories
from the OS main directory.
The correct answer is that you *can* install Vista *first* and then
install
XP and get it to work properly if you are extremely meticulous and either
RO
the files that Vista needs that XP will overwrite, or move these files to
move them back later. Also, you can slipstream a copy of XP in such a
manner
that none of the default install locations are chosen and force it to put
XP
in totally different locations. However, though Microsoft knows all of
this
and *could* help walk you through the process, it's several hours worth of
work and as such it's far easier to simply say: "You must install XP
first,
then Vista to perform an NT dual boot"
The easiest way, in my opinion, to dual boot Microsoft OS's is to have
multiple hard drives. Either physical or logical. Physical is far easier,
but there is a way to build logical drives on a single disk using a Linux
fdisk (because the Microsoft fdisk won't let you do this) to set each
logical drive as the bootable partition in turn. Install the OS, to the
partition that the OS *thinks* is "C:\", then switch the bootable
partition
for the next one, then set the BOOT.INI on the final install to look at
the
rest of the logicals. Rather convoluted, but doable. The better way is
physical drives where you temporarily unplug the drive for one to install
on
the other then have a large final drive to store shared applications like
Firefox or Photoshop or whatever will be running in both OS's. You do
*not*
have to leave either drive unplugged after install, just during. After
install you would set the Vista drive as Master and point it's BOOT.INI to
boot XP from the second drive.
Regards,
EdB
--
"I'm a Night Elf Mohawk!" - Mr. T.
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