BleepingComputer.com: O/s Dual Loads

Newbie here, so plz understand.........
Custom build, already has Vista Home Premium loaded, would also like to load XP home.
Vista will not let me do it, states that I have a more recent version of Windows loaded already (Vista)
How do I work around this? Do I have to dump Vista, load XP, then reload Vista again?

Thanks in advance !

newbie in hawaii, on May 17 2007, 07:39 PM, said:

Update:
Silly me, went to MS site, turns out I gotta load earlier version of Windows 1st, then later.
Hope this is correct..........

It's much, much easier to load XP first and then Vista - but there are ways to workaround this. Let us know and we'll make some suggestions.

Here's a link I found with a Google search (haven't tried it myself): http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

usasma, on May 18 2007, 12:19 AM, said:

Hey John and others,
You'll be glad to know that I loaded XP Home onto my new build, works like a charm!
Erased all my hard drives, including Vista load, that took awhile....
Dunno if I am ever, unless I really have to, load Vista onto this system, just not enough support yet, not to mention hidden secrets.....

Aloha and Mahalo to all !

I've been using Vista for about 18 months now and I love it! It's hard getting used to, but once you're used to it it's a pleasure to work with. For example, today I switched out my router - and Vista took care of everything for me except the static IP address. And, it pointed me at that so I'd remember to change it (gateway was 192.168.1.1 and now it's 192.168.0.1)

As for support, as long as you only use Vista certified apps, everything will generally work fine (plus, Vista's troubleshooting tools are way better than those in XP). Using apps that aren't certified is possible in many cases - but you've gotta play with them to make them work.

I'm having problems after trying to create a dual-boot on my SATA drive, that is having Vista, and adding XP. So after creating an XP partition, the computer will boot into the auto-detecting BIOS screen and freeze up. I cannot even enter the setup in BIOS or boot menu to change my boot device. I uninstalled the drive and changed my boot devices, but it still freezes up after reinstalling the SATA drive. I know the hard drive is causing the boot problem. Temporarily I have installed XP on a small IDE hard drive for now. If I could, I would try to delete the XP partition on the SATA and repair Vista, but I can't get past the frozen BIOS screen even if the IDE drive is the 1st boot device. How safe is it to plug in the SATA hard drive after booting into Windows? Would Windows even detect it for the purposes of deleting a partition? Any other ideas? I know I messed probably messed up creating the dual boot, I won't try it again. I'm not concerned about saving data, I already backed it up, I just don't want to shell out another 120 dollars for a new hard drive.
Here is the article I used to guide me. http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp.

squall_1981, please start another thread for your issues. FWIW - I'd put it all back together, install XP (with the SATA drivers) and partition the drive there, then do a custom install of Vista to another partition on the hard drive. Should go smoothly.