rainless
09-03-07, 12:35 AM
So I wanted a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT fool-proof method of installing Vista without disturbing my valuable XP install IN ANY WAY.
I have two hard drives: an IDE and an SATA
XP was on an E: drive (long story about how that happened) C: was the first partition I was using for storage on the SATA drive and F: is the drive I created to run Windows Server 2003
This was using the upgrade version of Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.
First of all I completely disconnected the IDE HD. Luckily for me Vista wouldn't "Upgrade" Server 2003, so it asked me which partition I wanted to install to. I selected the storage drive "C:".
It installed flawlessly and allowed me to boot to 2003 server from the Vista bootloader. Then I reconnected my XP HD. From there I could switch OSes by changing the boot HD... but that's kind of a hassle. So first I used the "Linux" function (as outlined in the .doc file) to determine where my XP install was in relation to Vista. Then I edited the "rdisk" and "partition" portions of the boot.ini on C:
After that I changed the default OS to XP, reset the boot countdown to 0 on both the XP bootloader and Vista bootloader, and VOILA... When my computer starts it boots right into XP.
If I want to boot to vista I just press up or down while I'm booting up. And if I want to get rid of Vista entirely I just make the IDE drive the first boot device and I can get rid of all the vista boot information as I like.
I have two hard drives: an IDE and an SATA
XP was on an E: drive (long story about how that happened) C: was the first partition I was using for storage on the SATA drive and F: is the drive I created to run Windows Server 2003
This was using the upgrade version of Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.
First of all I completely disconnected the IDE HD. Luckily for me Vista wouldn't "Upgrade" Server 2003, so it asked me which partition I wanted to install to. I selected the storage drive "C:".
It installed flawlessly and allowed me to boot to 2003 server from the Vista bootloader. Then I reconnected my XP HD. From there I could switch OSes by changing the boot HD... but that's kind of a hassle. So first I used the "Linux" function (as outlined in the .doc file) to determine where my XP install was in relation to Vista. Then I edited the "rdisk" and "partition" portions of the boot.ini on C:
After that I changed the default OS to XP, reset the boot countdown to 0 on both the XP bootloader and Vista bootloader, and VOILA... When my computer starts it boots right into XP.
If I want to boot to vista I just press up or down while I'm booting up. And if I want to get rid of Vista entirely I just make the IDE drive the first boot device and I can get rid of all the vista boot information as I like.