Can I dual-boot Vista/XP if both are installed seperately?

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jmk396

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Jul 22, 2004
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I wanted to have two completely seperate installs of XP and Vista so here is what I did:

* Created two NTFS partitions and set partition #1 to active or "boot"
* Installed XP to partition #1

* Set partition #2 to active or "boot"
* Installed Vista to partition #2

Now, I did this so that each install was completely seperate from each other and Vista didn't store it's boot files on XP's partition, etc.

However, can I have Vista boot XP even though it's on a different partition? I've configured bcdedit to use the partition and \ntldr but I think it says ntldr not found (during boot).

I'm guessing this is because XP is expecting itself to be the active/boot partition but Vista is currently set.

Do I need a 3rd party boot manager? It seems to be looking that way (which is fine).
 
I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend why you would be wanting to do what you are wanting to do, but yes. You're gonna need a third party boot manager to do it :)
 
Well, I'm going to be installing mac osx too so I just figured that this would be the best way to do it...
 
do it on 2 different drives and set the primary boot drive in the bios for whichever you want to use.

i hate having 2 os on the same drive, i use bios as my boot manager (but not for xp / vista :p)
 
no , use fdisk . set xp to main active partitoin , then boot to xp , then edit xps bootldr , that shld sort it
 
jmk396 said:
I wanted to have two completely seperate installs of XP and Vista so here is what I did:

* Created two NTFS partitions and set partition #1 to active or "boot"
* Installed XP to partition #1

* Set partition #2 to active or "boot"
* Installed Vista to partition #2

Now, I did this so that each install was completely seperate from each other and Vista didn't store it's boot files on XP's partition, etc.

However, can I have Vista boot XP even though it's on a different partition? I've configured bcdedit to use the partition and \ntldr but I think it says ntldr not found (during boot).

I'm guessing this is because XP is expecting itself to be the active/boot partition but Vista is currently set.

Do I need a 3rd party boot manager? It seems to be looking that way (which is fine).
Click to expand...

Your method of separating the OS installations and boot files is good for a single drive.
I used this method many years ago when hard drives cost a bomb and found it was by far the best way to install 2 OS's.
(now I use 2 separate drives and change the boot order in the CMOS to have entirely separated OS installs on different drives)

I think I understand what you mean when you asked "However, can I have Vista boot XP even though it's on a different partition?"
You can change the active partition in Disk Manager and then reboot using the now active partition.
I can tell you how to do it on XP, Vista will be similar:

Open Computer Management / Disk Management
Select the partition you want to boot next and right click it.
Select "mark partition as active".
Reboot, job done :)

Hopefully MAC OS has a similar tool you can use while already booted.
 
I'm not sure if this has been fixed or not but do NOT use BitLocker in Vista if you're installing a thirdparty bootloader.

Nenu said:
Hopefully MAC OS has a similar tool you can use while already booted.
Click to expand...

Yes, Startup Disk I believe is what you're looking for... that's off the top of my head, someone can probably correct me.
 
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