(Warning to the average Gotshoo reader: There’s a lot of computer jargon / nerd speak in this post. You might want to skip on by to the puppy pictures)

I dove head first into Windows Vista without looking back. Microsoft fan boy? Eh, more like I was tired with XP. I’ve been using Vista since about the day it came out. I like it, it’s clean, it’s fast, and it works for me.

The only exception is that the software I use for video editing, Sony Vegas Movie Studio, will only work for Windows XP (and Sony does not plan to update this version to be compatible with Vista). I found this out after buying a legit copy and moving to Vista.

Now I’ve got the Ultimate version of Vista which is packaged with Windows Movie Maker. It’s a great program, but it does really simple stuff with video and I want to use the software that I paid for which has a ton more features.

In order to dual boot, the usual operation is to partition a hard drive into different parts. This just means that the computer can see two different areas to store information – ie two different hard drives. Well I already had three drives in my system, and wanted to use one as my Vista drive, one as my XP drive, and the third as my shared media drive between the two systems.

I searched Google for a few hours to find a tutorial on how to install Vista and XP on two different drives and run in a dual boot system. The tutorials I found online were limited and lack instruction. The process I list down below was mainly through trial and error.

I am posting this as future reference for myself and anyone else that comes across this post via a search engine.

The run down:

Make sure to make backups of the files you change, might save you from a headache later on.

In my bios I am able to set the primary hard drive – the hard drive that the computer is going to try to boot with. I have two SATA drives and one IDE. Vista is already installed on one of the SATA drives and XP will be installed on the IDE drive.

You’ll want to install each operating system by itself. Either in bios change the order of procession of the drives or physically remove the alternate drive when installing the OS.

In this configuration, Vista will be the primary (master) drive and XP will be the secondary (slave) drive.

After installing XP, the boot.ini needs to be changed to reflect the new position . Right click on the “My Computer” icon and go to properties. Go to the “Advanced” tab. Under the “Startup and Recovery” section, click the “Settings” button. This will open the boot.ini.

You’ll want to edit the boot.ini in XP because Vista will not allow you to directly edit the file.

If you installed XP on the primary drive then the boot.ini more than likely looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Because we are setting the Vista drive back to the primpary position we will need to change the file. The primary drive is in position 0, the next drive is in position 1. We’ll change the file so that when we go to boot XP the boot file will know which drive holds the windows directory.

Change the value between the ( ) after rdisk to the corresponding disk.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

The processesion order of hard drives is zero based (0,1,2,3…). Setting rdisk to 1 means that XP is installed on the second hard drive.

Once XP is installed, I can go back into bios and change my Vista drive back to the primary drive.

If you have taken out the Vista drive, swap the drives back in making Vista the master and XP the slave.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to download and install EasyBCD in Vista. EasyBCD let’s you easily configure the boot file for Vista because the boot.ini file does not exist.

Once in EasyBCD, click the “Add/Remove Entries” button.

Click the Windows tab and select “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3.”

You’ll want to change the drive letter to the letter that represents the drive in Vista. In my configuration it was E. Click the save button then click “View Settings.”

Your config file should look something like this:

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry #1

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Microsoft Windows XP
BCD ID: {c6523d86-fde4-11db-9b60-0013d450d9a7}
Drive: E:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

Once you’ve saved the Vista boot file then you’re finished. You should be able to reboot and be greeted by the boot manager.