[Cerberus]

I bought a Laptop about 6 months ago, it came with XP Home, but it has a sticker "Vista capable", so I upgraded it to Vista Ultimate... Very nice, (after the headaches with drivers and stuff) everything works normal now!
After 3 weeks with Vista i realized that i need XP, but i want to keep Vista too because i really like it. So my brother got me a cd with XP Pro that i tried to install in another partition in the same hd, but when i boot from the cd after loading all the drivers and stuff i got a message saying that windows can't find any Hard drives installed... So honestly i don't know what i should do to have both OS in my PC... I thought about making that 2nd partition active before booting the installation cd but didn't want to risk it because i'm not sure if it will boot again so.. any help is welcome!!! Cheers

[Bob Cerelli]

The order for dual boot would be XP then Vista. At this point you are trying to do the reverse which won't work. You will lose Vista as an option.

Similar to installing Win98 after XP and then losing XP as part of the dual boot.

[Cerberus]

I've heard of that, but i wasnt sure!
So there's no way i can install XP in the same HD now?
Thanx 4 your help Bob!

[Bob Cerelli]

Not sure if there is no way but certainly more would need to be done after installing XP if you wanted to continue to dual boot to Vista. Haven't tried that setup myself yet.

But at that point you aren't even getting that far with the error "windows can't find any Hard drives installed."

Since you are using some other XP CD, what CD's came with the computer or can you get one's made for that laptop. It sounds like the generic XP CD isn't working.

[uhaligani]

I think you may be heading on a down slope with what you have so far (not) achieved. I would suggest, as you appear to have both installation disks, first installing XP (my own preference, given your comments, would be on D: partition.) Tkae the installation choice to reformat before commencing. It would use a little extra time but, if you can see them from the XP installation disk, format both partitions. After you have installed XP, install Vista (again, as I said, on C This will give you an automatic dual boot option when you restart.

[MowermanEd]

Cerberus,

I believe it can be done. Check this out: http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88231

[HollywdsTech]

Originally Posted by MowermanEd

Cerberus,

I believe it can be done. Check this out: http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88231

i'll tried thisn works for me you should try it to ceberus

[ysne58]

I managed to create a second partition to install xp professional on, but when i try to install xp it doesn't recognize the hard drive. I'm starting to think microsoft has deliberately made it difficult to dual boot any other os.

[crjdriver]

Many laptops are using sata drives now. You may need to install the sata driver via the F6 prompt for xp's setup to find the disk.

[JohnWill]

I think if you install XP on a separate partition than the existing Vista installation, you could then repair the Vista boot files and get both running. This was possible with earlier versions of Windows, but I haven't actually tried it with Vista yet.

[ysne58]

Thanks CRJ. I'll research sata drivers and then try that. I really hope that works.

I'm not getting any response from either HP or Microsoft on this. Well, HP did ask me to fill out a customer satisfaction survey for the time I tried online chat support. No tech showed up though, so I didn't get any help at all that way.

[Squashman]

What about just installing Virtual PC and running XP inside of that.

[ysne58]

I haven't done much with virtual pc. I can give that a try too.

[niceguy2001]

Here is the solution to install both XP and Vista on the same Hard Drive

1. You will need a partition tool like Acronis or Partition Magic to format a PRIMARY partition for Vista.

2. Run XP and install Vista (Dos mode may not work)

3. Do not use the upgrade function or you will loss XP

4. Choose new install

5. Choose the Primary Partition that had been formatted

6 DONE

Vista will create a dual boot screen for you now!!

Enjoy

[Cerberus]

thanx 4 your opinions guys but,
i reinstalled my original OS (XP Home SP2) then created a new partition and installed vista, everything works ok, i got a boot menu when i swich on the pc and i can choose wich OS to run!
Now, one thing that got me thinking, was CRJ comment, because when i tried to install XP Pro it didnt found any HDs, i will try to download SATA drives and see how it goes!!
Thanx ppl!