[RESOLVED] Dualbooting XP/Vista.

[Atheist]

Due to some bad luck with installing soundcard drivers I've decided to get a new harddrive and install XP (Before anyone thinks im pirating my windows licenses; I get them from Microsoft Academic Alliance) on it.

I currently have 1 HDD only, with Vista x64 installed.

The last time I tried this, XP booted straight away and suddently my computer had forgotten that I had Vista installed on another drive. What should I do to prevent this from happening again?
And what can I do to fix it if it the same thing does happen again?

[Mxjerrett]

This may help

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_v...step_guide.htm

and for good measure

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vi...creenshots.htm

[Atheist]

Looks good I will have a look at it when I get home.

[Lord Orwell]

I am a proponent of the free program easybcd. As long as you have vista installed on the other partition, this program can fix the boot sector and set it up easily for dual booting xp and vista. I am currently dual-booting vista and xp-64. And i installed vista first. easybcd is a free program.

[Atheist]

Well I started the XP setup yesterday. It finished the file copying but when it rebooted to launch the GUI setup I got a nasty error, as is briefly mentioned in the article Mxjerrett linked me too:

IMPORTANT NOTE – after the initial file copy, Windows XP reboots and loads up the GUI-based component of the install. You may get the following error: “A disk read error occurred – press Ctrl-Alt-Del to continue”. This is caused by a corrupt bootloader – click here to see how to fix this problem.

Altough when i click "click here" I get taken to the 1st page in the article again, with no help on how to solve the problem.

Any help on how to solve it?

[Atheist]

Alright looking through the comments on that article gave me a hint that the solution to the error I'm getting might involve booting with the Vista DVD and repairing the bootloader. I'll try that.

[Atheist]

Now I'm getting desperate. I tried the Vista bootloader repair but that only made the computer boot into Vista as normal again...It has completely forgot that I tried to install XP. If I try to install XP again it just starts all over again.

I've wasted a tremendeous amount of money for a poor student, if I dont get this fixed.

[Atheist]

Fixed it!
I used VistaBootPRO to add a boot entry for Windows XP. At first I selected the wrong device for it, it worked when i finally tried choosing "C:" as boot device for XP. Anyhow, problem resolved!

[Lord Orwell]

i prefer easybcd, but that is basically exactly how you have to fix it. Repair the vista boot if xp won't install then edit it from vista.