I got Vista with this machine, so I won't waste it. Plus, the only way to get bugs out of something is to have testers to report them. (And XP fights with my University's firwewall while Vista doesn't :( ). So I need a simple guide to dual booting Vista and XP. I've tried several times with EasyBCD and VistaBootLoader, but both times, trying to boot into XP fails. It says some files may be corrupt or missing. Now, I would try recovery, but it seems XP won't accept my Admin password, despite being the one I gave it...

Any help would be appreciated. A guide with Vista as the designated boot would be best.

And no OS flames, prods, attacks, etc, kthxbai.

lol.

I don't know if Vista is dual-bootable or not... but in any case, you need to re-install it from scratch to configure a dual-booting machine.

Install windows first, and make sure you only use a fraction of the HD for the Windows partition during the partition and format step in the installation process.

Then just pick any distro of Linux with its own boot loader, and install that on the unpartitioned space. You don't need a special loader for it, as a lot of distros have their own.

Yeah, I tried linux. Worked the first two times. Thrid time it gave me grub errors. Not going into that again.

Oh, my bad, I thought that was what you were talking about... so you want to dual-boot XP with Vista? You're on your own with that one... M$ Never intended either of them to play together with other OSs, so even if you could find a reliable third-party boot loader that lets you install both, there's no guarantee it would be stable.

Yeah, it's like the system files from the second install corrupt the system files from the first install.

Hmm, You can dual boot Vista and XP, but afaik, its easier if you install XP first, Vista second. You need to install XP leaving space for a second PRIMARY partition, you cannot install Vista to an extended partition, and you definatley cannot install it to the same partition as XP. If you don't leave space, you can use an Ubuntu 6.06 (or above) and use GParted to shrink it (or partition magic ect).

If MS never intended Vista to be dual booted with XP, why would they make the new bootloader capable of chainloading both 98/MSDOS style loaders and 2000/XP style loaders? Far be it from me to stick up for M$$$$, but it seems some people like to bash Vista without even trying it. So until you have had _real_ experience, comments to ones self please :P Oh and thats without using a third party loader...

Anyways, more info here --> http://apcmag.com/5023/dual_booting_xp_with_vista

[edit]
If you use system restore, you might also need to do this --> http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/2007/04/16/dual-boot-xp-and-vista-fix-system-restore-to-keep-restore-points-in-vista/ (read the comments section, can't be assed digging for the fix myself :P)

[edit 2]
Yes yes, Vista does need bashing, it just needs to be informative bashing, like the fact that Windows Update broke my sound again >.<!!!!!11111oneoneoneeleven

Thanks :D ut I just got my ethernet working with XP so I won't be fiddling for now :DDD

i have a vista dvd but im all over ubuntu and vista cant run Vo well on my comp :( and vista is poop.