# Laptop - Dual-Boot XP/Vista

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by Dusty (This site is so "educational") on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2008 10:46:10

Firstly I'm sorry if this topic has been posted before; I'd normally check but I'm in a bit of a hurry!
My new laptop just arrived (Toshiba A300D, AMD Turion x2, 3gb RAM, 250gb hard disc, the nuts!) bad news - it comes loaded with Vista Business. Good news! It comes with an XP Pro recovery disc so that's the first thing that's going on!
My question is how easy/advisable is it to load XP "on top" of Vista and have a dual-boot system?
PS I wouldn't normally post the spec but I thought you fellow geeks would appreciate it! *smile*

## Post 2 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2008 11:05:04

That depends, if it's a true recovery disk then impossible your vista will get wiped. If it's an installation disk for xp then it's possible I don't think it's to hard but not sure a little googling should tell you what you need to know.

## Post 3 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2008 12:25:31

I used the following to help when I did it!
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm
also, try: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/install-windows-xp-on-your-pre-installed-windows-vista-computer/
Let me know if I can help.

## Post 4 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2008 15:13:35

Its advisable, yes.
Easy: If its a recovery disk then you may be able to prevent the whipe by making a iso of the disk and ultering a file to tell it to give you options.
Apart from that, theres just so many things that it would depend on, - have they included drivers for the harddrive so that xp setup will see it? If its not a recovery disk, are the drivers for the hardware that xp won't find obtainable quickly? Is the setup unattended there for allowing a blind person to do it?
If it exists, post the contents of x:i386winnt.sif - feel free to remove the product key.

## Post 5 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Thursday, 28-Aug-2008 16:22:27

First if it is a recovery disk, why wouldn't it have the drivers? If it wasn't a recovery disk it would be retail or OEM, which is probably not the case. They dont' include OEM copies of windows with laptops, unless of course you include the any time upgrade dvd for vista as retail, in which case it is retail. This is not the same for xp. Stick the disk in, boot from it, when you get to the partition list, hit D on the vista partition, hit enter, then hit L to finalize the deletion. Make sure there are no more partitions left and if not it should be all one big partition. Install on that as usual. The disk will not be unattended but you can make it unattended, even if it is a recovery disk. the unattended text files are located in i386. This goes the same for any other version of windows, I know this because i've used them, they might be called differently but they are still in the i386 dir.

## Post 6 by Dusty (This site is so "educational") on Friday, 29-Aug-2008 6:57:36

Well I've been using Vista for the past few days. I've tinkered with it before but this is the first time it has been my main operating system. Here are my initial impressions: Looks dazzling but even with visual and other unnecessary frills disabled it's still disappointingly slow (and that's before I install things like ZoomText).
Going into and coming out of hibernation is taking a horrendously long time and is impractical for my need to "close and go". Don't get me going about startup!
So, the topic of this thread is now void cos there's no way I'm having a dual-boot, it's back to XP for me. But I want to image the system before I do that, as I have no Vista media. So, anybody know of a Vista-compatible tool for this (I've used partition magic in the past)?