Dual Booting Vista 32 and XP 64

[Sk8nspartan90]

Well my laptop came with vista 32 bit and I have a 64 x2 procesor so I thought I would download the evaluation copy (free trial) of windows xp 64... I did that, burned the iso, and created a 20gb partition for xp...
so I had three partitions:

c: Windows Vista
d: some restore drive taht I can't get rid of
e: Windows XP or (Local Disk)

I install xp64 on e and its running fairly well, however, I never get the option to dual boot... iow... when I boot my pc, it went straight to xp and not giving me an option between vista and xp... so I reinstalled vista on drive c. Now on startup, I get the screen that allows me to toogle between the two OS's... however, instead of saying windows xp64, it just says and older version of windows... so my 2 options were:

Windows Vista
An Older Version of Windows

when I tried to boot xp... it said it had an error and told me to put the install disk back in and choose the option of repairing...

I am thinking this is so because when I had first installed the xp it somehow would only boot to xp, now that vista is booting it wants to make it that way again...

of course its just a gay eval copy of xp64 and it is probably limited that way...

if any one knows what the hell is the problem please help!

 

[Doomulation]

I say re-install XP. You can easily modify the boot list in boot.ini under Windows XP. Hope it works that way.

 

[ShizZy]

Or be lazy like me and just change the boot order in the bios when you want to switch os.

 

[Chibi Nick]

Or be lazy like me and just change the boot order in the bios when you want to switch os.

That would work if he had them on seperate hdd, but they are just on different partitions

How did you create the 20gb partition? You may have screwed up your vista when you did that.

I'd do what Doomsy said and reinstall xp

 

[Doomulation]

That would work if he had them on seperate hdd, but they are just on different partitions

How did you create the 20gb partition? You may have screwed up your vista when you did that.

I very, very much doubt that. I've been dual-booting Vista and XP on two partitions on the same HDD! No problems whatsoever.

 

[t0rek]

No problems here as well

 

[Chibi Nick]

I very, very much doubt that. I've been dual-booting Vista and XP on two partitions on the same HDD! No problems whatsoever.

I meant that since he already had vista he would have had to shrink that partition to make the other one for XP which he may have done incorrectly and caused the vista partition to not work. It was just a thought

And (in the first part of my post) I was referring to using the bios to select the os

 

[Doomulation]

I don't see how you can screw up shrinking a partition. Of course, it can fail, but other than that...

 

[t0rek]

It fails sometimes, I don't like to do that. I prefer to backup all the data in another HDD and the make the partitions again from scratch

 

[Hunk_4TH]

I know this is probably a little late but I have a similar notebook and what I did was install XP first, when given the choice of where to install I clicked on delete partition then clicked create I gave XP like 84gb so XP installed, I rebooted and poped in the Vista disc and installed it on the second partition and all worked perfectly hope that helps only difference is I used an 32bit copy of XP pro

 

[Sk8nspartan90]

what it is is that when you insatll xp or any earlier operating system onto a vista based pc, it changes the boot ini. so at that point only one or the other can work, not both. so in order for me to have dual booted I needed to wipe it clean and install xp first, then vista on top of it

 

[Doomulation]

Yes, but that's only partially right. Vista doesn't use boot.ini. It uses some BCD crap. When selecting "previous windows versions," THEN it does by the boot.ini.

 

[Hunk_4TH]

yea, Your going to have to do a complete format but what I did was pop in the XP cd and deleted the partitions, then after choose create (to create a partition) and gave XP like 80gb or so and let XP install after that I poped in the Vista disc and did the same thing hope that helps it worked for Me atleast..