DJ Dan
04-06-2008, 07:57 AM
For those of you that don't particularly like Vista and want to stick with XP but your computer came with Vista preinstalled this is for you. This leaves you the option to upgrade to Vista when you feel it's stable enough or all your software works under it.
Preamble: Disc partitioning and changing your master boot record is not for the faint of heart and could very well render your system unusable.
That being said, I've been playing around for a week or so and am now successfully triple booting three operating systems.
Before you do anything make system recovery discs with the utility provided by Windows or your manufacturer. This will get you back to factory roll out if all else fails.
Most computers these days come off the shelf with a "hidden" backup partition after creating system restore discs I wipe that partition to give me more hard drive space to play with.
Warning # 2: Not all your hardware may work under XP, you have to search for drivers on your manufacturers website. Download the drivers and burn them to a CD before you start this process. For instance on my new desktop I had to install drivers for my network card before I could get online in XP.
Here is what you will need:
Download this Vista Rescue ISO (http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/) this contains the tools to fix your master boot record after XP boinks it. Make sure you burn this as a disc image and not a file.
Download EasyBCD (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) and install in Vista. We'll use this to make an entry in Vista's boot loader to boot into XP.
Lastly you will need an XP CD. If you don't have one buy an OEM copy from NewEgg or Tiger Direct for about $90.
Lets get started:
Go to Administrative Tools in Vista's Control Panel, open the disk management plugin. Look at your partitions there should be 1 but a lot of manufactures have 2. If you've made recovery discs it's safe to wipe the recovery partition, it's completely up to you.
Right click on the C:\ drive and hit shrink volume. Make this as small as Vista will let you.
With the new empty space you just created, right click and format it to NTFS, assign a drive letter if you like.
Pop your XP CD in the drive, reboot, press any key to boot with the CD.
Accept the ELUA, when you get to the install portion make sure you install on the NEW partition, else you'll wipe Vista.
Select the new partition hit install.
Let windows do it's thing copying files.
The computer will reboot itself and you'll be greeted with a cryptic error. "Disc Read Error Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot". Now pop the Vista recovery CD in the drive I had you burn earlier and reboot.
Press any key to boot from CD. When the menu comes up tell it to repair start up options. This will write a new master boot record for Vista.. Reboot your computer, remove the CD from the drive.
You're back into Vista. Now use EasyBCD to create a boot menu entry for XP, this part is pretty self explanatory. Make sure you tell it to write MBR after you've created the entry.
Put your XP CD back in the drive reboot your computer (don't press any keys) and select windows XP at the boot menu. Let Windows continue installing.
When XP is done installing reboot and choose weather to boot into Vista or XP.
---
This is just a rough draft of the how-to, I wrote a longer one on my blog but if this is really going to help people and your going to use it, I'll rewrite it and include screen shots. Let me know how far you want me to take this.
-Dan
Preamble: Disc partitioning and changing your master boot record is not for the faint of heart and could very well render your system unusable.
That being said, I've been playing around for a week or so and am now successfully triple booting three operating systems.
Before you do anything make system recovery discs with the utility provided by Windows or your manufacturer. This will get you back to factory roll out if all else fails.
Most computers these days come off the shelf with a "hidden" backup partition after creating system restore discs I wipe that partition to give me more hard drive space to play with.
Warning # 2: Not all your hardware may work under XP, you have to search for drivers on your manufacturers website. Download the drivers and burn them to a CD before you start this process. For instance on my new desktop I had to install drivers for my network card before I could get online in XP.
Here is what you will need:
Download this Vista Rescue ISO (http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/) this contains the tools to fix your master boot record after XP boinks it. Make sure you burn this as a disc image and not a file.
Download EasyBCD (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) and install in Vista. We'll use this to make an entry in Vista's boot loader to boot into XP.
Lastly you will need an XP CD. If you don't have one buy an OEM copy from NewEgg or Tiger Direct for about $90.
Lets get started:
Go to Administrative Tools in Vista's Control Panel, open the disk management plugin. Look at your partitions there should be 1 but a lot of manufactures have 2. If you've made recovery discs it's safe to wipe the recovery partition, it's completely up to you.
Right click on the C:\ drive and hit shrink volume. Make this as small as Vista will let you.
With the new empty space you just created, right click and format it to NTFS, assign a drive letter if you like.
Pop your XP CD in the drive, reboot, press any key to boot with the CD.
Accept the ELUA, when you get to the install portion make sure you install on the NEW partition, else you'll wipe Vista.
Select the new partition hit install.
Let windows do it's thing copying files.
The computer will reboot itself and you'll be greeted with a cryptic error. "Disc Read Error Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot". Now pop the Vista recovery CD in the drive I had you burn earlier and reboot.
Press any key to boot from CD. When the menu comes up tell it to repair start up options. This will write a new master boot record for Vista.. Reboot your computer, remove the CD from the drive.
You're back into Vista. Now use EasyBCD to create a boot menu entry for XP, this part is pretty self explanatory. Make sure you tell it to write MBR after you've created the entry.
Put your XP CD back in the drive reboot your computer (don't press any keys) and select windows XP at the boot menu. Let Windows continue installing.
When XP is done installing reboot and choose weather to boot into Vista or XP.
---
This is just a rough draft of the how-to, I wrote a longer one on my blog but if this is really going to help people and your going to use it, I'll rewrite it and include screen shots. Let me know how far you want me to take this.
-Dan