jbrown456

I bought a HP Pavillion dv6000 in December, and it came with vista home premium. I'm pretty much sick of it already. So far:

-iTunes won't work
-Premiere Elements won't work
-MSN won't work (sometimes)

and they are all vista ready versions.

I'm seriously considering going back to XP, but I kind of want to dual boot XP and Vista, because I still like how organized vista is.

But I don't know if its possible because HP didn't give me a vista cd, i had to make this recovery disk thing, but that's all i have. I have a serial # sticker for vista though..

My question is this, without having to go buy another copy of vista is it possible to dual boot xp and vista? Right now I have a 10GB partition that is called HP Recovery, and I assume thats the image for a fresh vista install.

PC eye

That 10gb of drive space contains an archive of drivers for all hardwares along with the board itself. Without a full install copy of Vista and one for XP along with the partitioning tool found on the Vista installation disk if not something like GParted you wouldn't be able to shrink the Vista primary down in size enough to see a second one created for XP to go onto.

After XP is on at some point Vista would have to be reinstalled so that XP would be added into the Vista boot loader as an option. The alternative without effect on Vista would be adding in a second drive for XP and unplugging the current one to see XP installed as a totally separate stand alone OS there. The boot device menu or a 3rd party boot loader then selects the drive to load the OS on. One univeral boot loader was simply booting with floppy and then selecting the drive. The OS on it would then load.

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jbrown456

So there is no way to put XP on my computer without messing up my vista install?

mk0825

i need to do this to.

PC eye

To isolate the original preinstalled copy of Vista adding in a second hard drive would allow you to unplug the host drive long enough to throw XP on the second one as a stand alone installation there. Once XP on and the Vista drive is plugged back in you can either go into the bios every time to change the drive order or see if there's a boot device menu option at post assigned to the F8 or another F key.

That allows the one time session each time you select the second drive if Vista remains as the default or Vista then becomes the second one according to which is set as default in the boot order. For shrinking down the Vista primary and seeing XP go onto a new second primary would then require a reinstall of Vista to see XP added into it's own boot loader as an option. That would directly effect Vista there.

For seeing XP without worry of anything being done to the Vista installation the extra drive would be the option. That would allow you to run each version separately from the other.

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nyhk

There are some guides on the net which shows how you can restore Vista's boot sector after you've installed xp, and how you add xp to the boot menu.

Vistabootpro is a tool that can help you do that by clicking the mouse a few times

PC eye

VistaBootPro is copycat of the EasyBCD 1.7.1. For repairing the Vista mbr after inadvertently installing XP and no longer seeing Vista load you boot up with the Vista installation disk and immediately go into the repair tools section instead of the install now option. The automatic repair startup problems tool will correct the boot information.

Simply editing the Vista boot loader won't see XP load as an option there. With Vista already on you have to reinstall that after XP is installed for the newer version to add XP as an option. The EasyBCD tool besides deciding the default OS can also be used to rename "previous versions of Windows" to Windows XP Home, Pro, or MCE according to the version installed.

EasyBCD 1.7.1 is a free tool found at http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

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nyhk

You don't need to reinstall Vista. Restore the boot sector, and write an entry in the boot menu that points to xp, that's it

PC eye

The APC articles and others were already tried for that when Vista was in beta and later when released. Like any combination of two versions with one older the newer has to go on last to effectively see the older version added in as an option.

Once you go into a dual with XP you also lose the Vista restore points right away. That's when a work around has to be applied in order to see those preserved. But the main quesion will be on whether to dual boot on one drive or see XP as a separate stand alone installation. Despite the need for pressing the assigned F key at post time that can save a workd of hurt if either version has to be reinstalled at some point.

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Youtube falls short of Google's expectations
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Congress studies how people track your online use
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jbrown456

Okay, I'm way too lazy for all of this

So my other question is:

Is there any way to format my computer and switch to xp, but still have to option of going back to vista without buying a new disk for vista (because all i have is this hp setup)