Encountered problem setting up dual boot with XP & Vista

[panzer948]

Hi,

Just built a new machine. Installed XP first and spent the time updating it, drivers etc. before installing vista 64 on a separate hard drive. Went thru the vista setup & chose the two separate OS path, etc.

After getting vista all setup, I went back into bios (I guess this is the only way) and changed my HDD boot order to the XP drive. Restarted and I get a "boot mgr" error when booting from XP drive (partition) now. Not sure what the problem is. I did change my drive/partition volume names under vista. COuld this cause the problem in XP?

Also, isn't there an easier way to create a dual boot than having to go into bios everytime?

Thanks for any input

 

[heymrdj]

google easybcd. free vista boot manager for vista that even MS themselves use. Easy to use. Should have installed Vista first. Vista uses a proprietary bootmgr that can boot XP but not the opposite.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: panzer948


Also, isn't there an easier way to create a dual boot than having to go into bios everytime?

Yes, let vista automatically detect xp installation and install its boot loader entry for it. basically, yo don't do anything, vista does all for you..

 

[humanure]

what postmortem said, let vista manage the boot order, if you want xp to be the default, set that up in vista. go to start-right click computer-properties-advanced settings-advanced-startup in there you should see a tab to set up default OS.

 

[panzer948]

thanks for the replies. Although I had read on several forums to install XP first not vista since vista can detect XP's presence. During the vista install, I was carefull to follow the prompts on installing it and also allowing a separate OS to exist, but not sure if that allowed it to install the boot loader (didn't see this as an option during install).

I'm not at home right now to check my advanced settings (home away for the holidays ) But I perfer to have vista as the default and only use XP for video editing and possibly a game or two. So... what I think you are saying is I can still set this under the advanced properties tab and then use that to boot into XP from vista?

The other idea is just to reinstall XP. The onboard MB audio drivers got screwed up and I have no sound under XP. If that fixes both the audio and be able to boot into both OS, I will be set. I'll check out easybcd.

 

[Twista]

i installed vista on a clean partition on a system with xp already installed.

I hate vista boot loader, but all my OS's still work fine.