[RESOLVED] Dual Booting in Laptop

[Siddharth Rout]

I am not sure if this is the right forum. My apologies if it is not and would request a moderator to move it to the right forum or direct me to the right forum. Either will be appreciated.

I bought a Laptop Today

and I was wondering if I can have dualbooting in it (XP and Vista)

I have got some mixed feedbacks from my friends that Vista will give problems in dual booting with XP in a laptop. I have dual booting in my pc and am not facing any problems.

1) Is that correct?
2) If yes, then what are the problems that I can face?
3) If no, The how do I go about it? I know how to do it in a pc. It's just that it's a brand new laptop and i don't wanna take any chances...

Any other do's nd Don'ts also are welcome

Thanking you guys in anticipation for any feedback....

Relevent Laptop Specs: VGN-FZ27G (Sony Viao), 2.2 Ghz, Vista Home, NVdia Graphics, 1 GB Ram. (Let me know if you wanna know anything more about the specs...)

[RobDog888]

You could just install Virtual PC 2007 and create a virtual partition and install XP. It will run within Vista but it emulates a window with which you can install XP and run.

Thread Moved

[Siddharth Rout]

Thanks Rob for moving the thread

No I don't wanna do that. I want it on seperate partitions. Would that create any problems?

[RobDog888]

Cant say. I havent done a dual boot in years. Would be most stable to buy a second hd and switch out to boot to either. Just an option if its affordable.

Are you needing this for just testing or ??

[Siddharth Rout]

Nah

I actually want dual booting in the laptop as some softwares which run in xp cant run in vista or I want two different versions to run from my laptop for example. Office 2003 (for my office) and Office 2007 (personal use), VB6 and Visual Studio 2008 etc...

Rgd an extra harddisk, that is one option but after spending (Rs 72000 [approx $2000.00]) that seems a faraway option

[RobDog888]

Yea, then dual booting is best if its stable. I never liked it as if one problem with it is if the drive fails you loose both, if the mbr fails then you loose both, if you get a virus then both may be affected etc.

If you had two hds then they would be isolated and stable.

Have you searched for any multiboot software out there yet?

[Siddharth Rout]

Have you searched for any multiboot software out there yet?

No I haven't because I haven't used the same for my desktop. I simply installed both the OS in different partitions and it prompts me when i boot the pc to select my option.

[RobDog888]

See told you I havent dont it for a long time, back in the day we had to have software to manage the boot partition

[NickThissen]

If it's a brand new laptop, what is keeping you from simply trying? Don't take my word for it but I can't imagine the laptop itself (hardware) being affected if something goes wrong.

If something does go wrong, you can simply format it and reinstall it, since it is brandnew you will probably not miss any files or programs? Unless it was preinstalled with some programs you need which you don't have the cd of (which would be weird imo, you should always have all the cd's/dvd's of the preinstalled programs).

I have a dual boot Vista/XP aswell, on my pc though. I never heard of any problems doing it with a laptop but I have never tried either.

[03myersd]

The laptop will work identical to the PC more or less. I have XP and Vista dual booting on my desktop with no problems at all. I had XP installed first. Created a spare partition. Then installed Vista to that partition. I did exactly the same with my laptop except I used Ubuntu instead of Vista.

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

I have heard of problems of if you install Vista first then another OS, Vista doesn't seem to like that too much. But, XP then Vista seems to work fine. One of those subtle orders that you should install stuff.

My recommendation:
For the bootloader use GRUB (it's a linux bootloader), because the NT bootloader isn't the greatest thing in the world. Especially since its relatively easy to repair grub. Not so much the NT bootloader, you would have to do a lot of praying for that.

(Backup your data before this step!) Use partition magic (or gparted if you don't have PM) to resize the partition if you used the whole drive to install vista.

After resizing the partition, if you are feeling adventurous then go ahead and plop the XP Disc in and tell it to install to the empty partition (you probably have to tell the XP installer to create one, but thats a no brainier at this point). Then just go through the motions. I am putting my money on that Windows XP will not see the Vista install right away, so you have to add something to the boot.ini. After you input the magic string, everything you boot up you will get a menu asking which OS.
Now, if you don't want that many headaches, I would recommend installing the GRUB bootloader as that, supposedly, can auto detect most OSs.

[Lord Orwell]

i would suggest borrowing or creating someone's UBUNTU install disc simply because it can resize windows partitions. You don't have to actually install the entire program, just do the partition resizing. For some reason ($$), microsoft never gave windows this functionality. This will save you a lot of time and headaches that would be caused by reinstalling BOTH OSes instead of just one.

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

i would suggest borrowing or creating someone's UBUNTU install disc simply because it can resize windows partitions. You don't have to actually install the entire program, just do the partition resizing. For some reason ($$), microsoft never gave windows this functionality. This will save you a lot of time and headaches that would be caused by reinstalling BOTH OSes instead of just one.

There is no reason to do this and possibly cause problems.
Gparted was created exactly for partition editing.

[03myersd]

For the bootloader use GRUB (it's a linux bootloader), because the NT bootloader isn't the greatest thing in the world. Especially since its relatively easy to repair grub. Not so much the NT bootloader, you would have to do a lot of praying for that.

Granted its not as good as GRUB but its still very easy to repair. Just stick in the NT disk and once you get to the repair console just type "fixboot" and it will repair it.

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

But the better question is will the NT Bootloader detect the correct operating systems. Consider the senerio that you plop in the Vista disc (I assume it has a console recovery mode) and type that. Will it only detect the Vista install and not the XP install? Flip the situation you insert the XP install disc to go into recovery mode, will it only recover it for the XP install?

I have no clue what will happen, but it would be interesting to see if anyone could test it and report back .

[03myersd]

I haven't done it in a while but if I remember correctly I used an XP disk and it didn't pick up ubuntu, but I fixed that by booting into XP and fixing the boot loader.

[Lord Orwell]

There is no reason to do this and possibly cause problems.
Gparted was created exactly for partition editing.

that's exactly the program that comes on the install cd. You will notice it runs on linux?

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

that's exactly the program that comes on the install cd. You will notice it runs on linux?

That maybe, but there is no reason to run the ubuntu live cd. Start an install, then stop. I haven't been through the install lately, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually write the partition changes until you start to install. Which means it will start to copy files and settings. Including probably the GRUB bootloader with ubuntu listed there, which is not what you want and will cause you more of a headache.

It will be much quicker if you put in a gparted live cd, because the only things it's going to load up is what it needs to put a GUI on the screen. I haven't run the latest version of their live cd but, I'm sure it has a ton of stuff it loads in memory, and don't quote me on this, but it probably loads beryl or compiz which is completely unneeded for just changing some partitions.

[Lord Orwell]

even the osx panther cd will suit your purposes. nearly every OS out there, except ones by microsoft, let you resize windows partitions. And the Ubuntu cd is also a Live cd. Yes it might take 5 minutes to boot the live cd, but it doesn't put anything on the hard drive, and you have full access to all the tools.

[Siddharth Rout]

k1ll3rdr4g0n
Lord Orwell
NickThissen
03myersd
RobDog888

Thanks to you all for the valuable feedback.

Here's what I have done till now.

Using Vista, I have created three partitions. Fortunately, you have the "Shrink" facility to create partitions on the harddisk. Now If I format the C: and insert the Windows XP CD will it recognise the C:? That's What I have done on the PC but is this the same procedure in the Laptop?

Also I want dual booting only in XP and Vista. Nothing else.

Once again I really appreciate all the valuable feedback.

[03myersd]

You don't need to format anything. Just put in the XP CD, go through the initial set up, then when it gets to the point where you choose a partition, just choose a blank one. If it is not formatted then it will give you the option to do it, if it is formatted then it will skip it.

[Siddharth Rout]

You don't need to format anything. Just put in the XP CD, go through the initial set up, then when it gets to the point where you choose a partition, just choose a blank one. If it is not formatted then it will give you the option to do it, if it is formatted then it will skip it.

I tried that but xp doesn't recognise the harddisk if vista is installed....

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

even the osx panther cd will suit your purposes. nearly every OS out there, except ones by microsoft, let you resize windows partitions. And the Ubuntu cd is also a Live cd. Yes it might take 5 minutes to boot the live cd, but it doesn't put anything on the hard drive, and you have full access to all the tools.

Neither does gparted, and what other tools do you need? And I would double check that, as I don't believe it lets you resize, only delete/add partitions.

@03myersd
If he used the whole drive for the Vista install, he needs to resize his partition else Windows XP will only see the one partition or none at all. And the only thing he can do inside of the Windows XP install CD is to delete or create a partition, which is NOT what he wants. He needs to use some sort of partition manager to resize his partition to where he has free space on the disk allowing him to create another partition for the XP install.

Theoretically, if you have an empty partition the Windows XP install CD should see it and be like "would you like to install to this partition?"

[03myersd]

Using Vista, I have created three partitions.

I thought he had created the partitions?

[Siddharth Rout]

Theoretically, if you have an empty partition the Windows XP install CD should see it and be like "would you like to install to this partition?"

Mine doesn't as I mentioned in the previous post...

[03myersd]

What is the partition formatted as? And why do you have 3 partitions now? Don't you just need one for Vista and one for XP?

[Siddharth Rout]

What is the partition formatted as? And why do you have 3 partitions now? Don't you just need one for Vista and one for XP?

1) NTFS
2) 1st for XP (80gb), 2nd for Vista (80gb) and 3rd for Dump (40GB) (Installation softwares, backups etc...)

[Lord Orwell]

killerdragon, i have personally installed ubuntu on a system that already had xp64 using up the entire partition. It resized an 80gb part to 60gb no problem.

Xp's install program won't see the partition if you made them dynamic partitions. They have to be left as "standard" or "simple".

[Siddharth Rout]

I think I found the problem...

http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=826494

Now I have to wait till I get home to test it

[kleinma]

Without reading any of the replies at all, I will just tell you my take on what you are trying to do:

1) it is easier to install XP first, Vista second if possible. The absolute best way to do this, is to totally format the hard drive, and run the XP setup from bootable XP installation CD. In the XP setup, you can delete the existing partitions, and create a new partition on the drive, make it whatever size you want for XP, obviously leave at least 10-12GB open for Vista, I recommend a lot more though.

Install XP fully and get that booting, if you want to group your hard drives together drive letter wise, you will want to change your CD rom drive letter to something farther down the alphabet. Otherwise you end up usually with

XP boot:
C drive = XP partition
D drive = CD rom
E drive = Vista partition

Vista boot
C drive = Vista partition
D drive = CD rom
E drive = Vista parition

If you don't care, don't worry about CD rom drive letter.

2) Install Vista. Boot your PC from the Vista installation CD, and install Vista the same way you did XP, the screens are a bit different but the process is pretty much the same. You will have a screen to select parition size and all that based on whatever is left on your HD after the XP install.

Vista uses a different boot loader than ALL previous versions of Windows called BCD. So it has no reference to the standard boot.ini that XP and other windows OS use. So what happens is, when you boot your computer, the Vista boot loader is loaded, and gives you 2 prompts "Boot Windows Vista", or "Boot Legacy Windows OS". Selecing to boot a legacy OS will then proceed to process the boot.ini and things pretty much pick up as normal as far as booting XP goes from this point.

Google for a program called EasyBCD which will help you customize things like how long the boot menu is displayed before booting the default OS (vista), or to change the default OS, etc.. otherwise its all command line driven in Vista and is sort of a pain unless you know what you are doing. You may not even care to change these settings at all.

So that is pretty much it, but I will name a few other issues you may run into.

1) XP doesn't see any hard drives in XP setup
This happens when you are using RAID or SATA, as XP didn't support this out of the box. On a laptop its most likely SATA. You will probably come across some posts telling you to disable/change a setting in the BIOS to enable a legacy mode or something along those lines. Don't do that, its the crappy way out, because you will sacrafice performance of the drive to do this. Also if you try to change it back later, you will get BSOD in windows because now you brought the same original problem back. Find the correct XP driver (I assure you it exists), and load it to a floppy. Then when XP setup is starting, you will notice the "Hit F6 to load SCSI or RAID driver", so hit F6 there. Later in the setup, you will get the chance to load the SATA driver from the floppy, and then XP setup will see the hard drive like normal. I actually had to borrow an external USB floppy drive from a friend to do this on my laptop due to lack of floppy drive. XP setup sucked because of this. Vista setup lets you load drivers from USB key or CD rom, so its way way easier in Vista, however Vista likely has all the drives it needs already anyway.

2) search around. It took me a few hours of research to find all the XP drivers for my Vista laptop, but I found them all sure enough. I had 10 devices marked as "unknown" when I booted my laptop in XP the first time, but I found drivers for everything. One easy way to try to ID things you need drivers for if you have no other way to ID what they are, is to boot vista, and take note of all the devices, them boot XP and see what is missing. Those are your "unknown devices" that you need drivers for. Windows Update may even find a few of them so you can try that too.

3) I didn't use this, but I came across it in my searching for drivers. This looks like a handy guide for dual booting, especially if you don't want to do a full reformat, they give you all kinds of scenarios and solutions for changing partitions and what not, and installing the OS in any order you want.
http://apc.simbient.com.au/the_defin...stepbystep.htm

[Lord Orwell]

Could this be the problem that win xp is not able to detect the hard disk?

NTFS vs FAT ?

If yes, then what is the solution?

this would only be an issue if you were booting from a dos disk and running the xp install program. If you boot from the xp install disk, this is not a problem at all. The install program can read/write ntfs obviously, since it can install to them.

Here's the most likely answer:
http://www.petri.co.il/difference_be..._2000_2003.htm
It clearly states that home-edition xp can't read dynamic partitions.

[kleinma]

It is most likely a SATA inteface for the hard drive, not anything to do with the type of file table any partitions have.

Most new laptops use sata, and you need to load the sata driver using F6 when you first run the XP setup from boot.

[Lord Orwell]

that could also be it. i've had issues with it not reading my dvd drive during install. quite annoying considering that's what the 3rd party driver is stored on.

[Siddharth Rout]

1) XP doesn't see any hard drives in XP setup
This happens when you are using RAID or SATA, as XP didn't support this out of the box. On a laptop its most likely SATA. You will probably come across some posts telling you to disable/change a setting in the BIOS to enable a legacy mode or something along those lines. Don't do that, its the crappy way out, because you will sacrafice performance of the drive to do this. Also if you try to change it back later, you will get BSOD in windows because now you brought the same original problem back. Find the correct XP driver (I assure you it exists), and load it to a floppy. Then when XP setup is starting, you will notice the "Hit F6 to load SCSI or RAID driver", so hit F6 there. Later in the setup, you will get the chance to load the SATA driver from the floppy, and then XP setup will see the hard drive like normal. I actually had to borrow an external USB floppy drive from a friend to do this on my laptop due to lack of floppy drive. XP setup sucked because of this. Vista setup lets you load drivers from USB key or CD rom, so its way way easier in Vista, however Vista likely has all the drives it needs already anyway.

I know this way

But the problem is that the sony laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. After pressing F6 when I come to the screen where you need to press "S", it says that no floppy disk detected (of course ) I have the XP drivers. That is loaded in the pendrive but it is only searching for a floppy disk

Do I need to buy a detachable floppy drive?

Thanks for you valuable feedback till now...

[kleinma]

yes, with XP you NEED to use a floppy. Sucks, but it is the case.

The only other option, which I find to be more of a pain than just getting a floppy for 20 bucks, is to make a "Slip stream" CD of XP, which is basically the XP installation CD, with the extra drivers put on the CD, in a way that setup uses those drivers during install. However I have never done this personally, but you could google about it.

this has been the case for as long as I can remember for windows setup, of course pretty much every PC had a floppy until not that long ago.

That is why Vista's setup is so much better, because you can use a USB key or CD to fetch drivers from at setup time.

[03myersd]

For slipstreaming try the program nLite. I use it and have found it to be really good.

[Lord Orwell]

you can possibly set your bios to recognize the usb drive. mine lets me boot from one. when i do, it sets it as a: drive.

[Siddharth Rout]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After 41 posts and spoiling 6 CD's, I finally was able to use nLite and install XP!!!

Thanks for all the help you guys have provided

[kleinma]

glad to hear you got it working..

so after the install, how many devices did XP need drivers for?

[Siddharth Rout]

glad to hear you got it working..

so after the install, how many devices did XP need drivers for?

None

I can now log on to xp. I haven't yet checked the device manager as I was getting late for office.

Even if it asks, i will have the drivers ready. I downloaded it from the sony website.

One strange thing happened. My vista was installed on the C: The moment I installed XP on D: and restarted the option to select the OS didn't come. It directly went to XP. I guess I have to now re-install XP on C:(After formating) and then install Vista after that on the D:

your thoughts...