Add
an XP Dual Boot Option to Your New Vista
system
Written
by Scott Dunn, Editor of Windows Secrets
If a new computer arrived in your recent past, or you plan to buy one
in the
near future, chances are it will come with Windows Vista installed.
Although
some manufacturers still give you the option of getting XP on your new
system,
that option is likely to dry up for most consumers later this year when
Microsoft stops selling Windows XP.
If you're not ready to dive into Vista all at once, there is
an
answer: set up your Vista computer to dual-boot between Vista
and XP.
In this article, I'll tell you how to make your PC give you a choice
between Vista and XP every time you
start up. In a separate
article coming soon, I'll give you some additional tips that save disk
space on
a dual-boot system.
Although some sources, such as Computer Shopper Magazine, advise that
you need
an add-on product like VistaBootPro to dual-boot, you can accomplish
the same
thing without any additional software other than the two
operating systems.
Before starting, make sure you have your Windows XP install discs ready
as well
as your Windows Vista DVD. In addition, it's a good idea to make a
complete
system backup before beginning an operation like this.
Once you've laid that groundwork, you're ready to go to work:
Step 1. In Vista, click Start,
type diskmgmt.msc,
and press Enter. Click Continue if prompted by User Account Control.
Step 2. Right-click a drive and choose Shrink Volume. Specify
the amount
to shrink, which in this case is the amount you want for your XP
partition. At
a minimum, you'll need around 2.5GB for XP Pro SP2. I suggest you
select a
larger partition to leave room for updates and other files that may
need to be
on the same drive as XP. Because I wanted a 5GB partition, I typed 5000
(representing 5,000 megabytes) in the available box. Click Shrink.
Step 3. Right-click the newly available area and choose New
Simple Volume.
Follow the steps in the wizard to assign a drive letter now, or wait
until the
next step. When prompted, check Perform a quick format to
format the
volume with NTFS.
Step 4. When the wizard is done formatting the new volume, you
can
assign or rearrange drive letters as needed. For example, changing
drive
letters may also put your CD/DVD drive in a more logical order.
To do that, right-click a volume or the CD/DVD drive and choose Change Drive Letters and Paths.
If a volume
hasn't got a drive letter yet, click Add. Otherwise, select the drive
icon in
the dialog box and click Change.
If you're rearranging the letters on existing drives, you may need to
change
the drives in a particular order. Or you may need to give a drive a
temporary
letter (such as Z) to free up a letter for another drive; you would
change the
Z drive to something else later. Make your selection and click OK.
Repeat for
other partitions or drives until you have the order you want.
Step 5. When you're done with your partitioning chores, exit
Disk
Management. Insert your XP disc into the drive and restart your system,
booting
from that disk.
Step 6. Follow the steps to install XP. When asked for the
target drive,
select your new partition and press Enter. Because you already
formatted this
partition with NTFS, you can skip the formatting step. At the
appropriate
screen, arrow down to Leave the current file system intact (no
changes)
and press Enter. Continue the installation process until it's finished
and XP
has started.
Step 7. Your system now boots to XP, so we'll need to do some
fixing to
set up a boot menu. Insert your Vista DVD and restart the computer from
it.
Click Next in the first screen.
Step 8. Don't click Install when prompted! Instead, click Repair
Your
Computer in the lower-left corner.
Step 9. When the System Recovery Options dialog appears, make
sure
Microsoft Windows Vista is selected and click Next. In the next dialog
box,
select the Command Prompt option at the bottom.
Step 10. In the command-prompt window, type the following
commands and
press Enter after each one:
bootrec.exe /fixMBR
bootrec.exe /fixBoot
Step 11. Close the command prompt and click Restart.
Step 12. When your computer has booted into Vista,
click Start, type cmd.exe, and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to make
the
command window open with elevated privileges. Click Continue, if
prompted by
User Account Control.
Step 13. Type the following commands in the command window, one
at at
time, pressing Enter after each one. After each command, you should get
the
response, "The operation completed successfully." A response of,
"The specified entry already exists," is OK, too. If not, retype your
command to make sure you've entered it correctly. If Vista
is installed on a drive other than c:, change the first command
below to
use the proper drive letter. The curly braces
around {ntldr} in each
command must be typed exactly as shown:
bcdedit -set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit -set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit -displayorder {ntldr} -addlast
bcdedit -set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"
That's it! The next time you restart your system, you should be see a
prompt
that will let you choose between Vista
or XP.
Select the one you want and press Enter.
Then
you start your dual-boot system,
the menu will appear for a few seconds.
If you don't press any keys, eventually Windows Vista will start.
Fortunately,
you can change this if you don't want Vista to
be your default operating system. You can also customize the waiting
period
before the default kicks in.
Here's what to do:
Step 1. Click Start. Type systempropertiesadvanced and press
Enter. Click Continue, if prompted by User Account Control.
Step 2. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings.
Step 3. At the top of the dialog box, select the
operating system you
want to start by default.
Step 4. In the box to the right of Time to display list of operating
systems, specify the number of
seconds for the options to stay on screen.
Click OK.
Microsoft provides documentation of Vista's bcdedit
command and its parameters in an article in the Windows Vista Technical
Library.
Having two operating systems on the
same computer definitely takes a little
extra disk space. In a future column, I'll show you some ways to make
the two
operating systems share some common resources to save on storage.