To be honest, I’ve only installed Windows Vista once on an empty hard drive and I hardly even use it. Since Vista SP1 is going to be out soon to fix many problems, I need to brush up my Vista knowledge by using it more often. Even though I will try to use Vista more often, I still want to use XP. The best way is to install both Vista and XP on the same hard drive and make it dual bootable. There are 2 scenarios I can think of. First one is you already have Windows Vista installed and you’d like to install Windows XP as a secondary operating system. As for the second scenario, you are currently using Windows XP and would like to install Windows Vista.

We’ll start off by learning how to dual boot Windows Vista and Windows XP with Vista installed first. In this tutorial, I assume that you know how to install Windows because I’ll only be more detail in showing the important steps on how to configure your boot manager to dual boot between Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Just follow the steps below on how to dual boot Vista and XP with Vista installed first.

If Vista has been installed on a partition which takes up 100% of the hard drive, you need to repartition your drive to make some space for XP.

1. In Windows Vista, right click My Computer and select Manage. Expand Storage and select Disk Management. Right click on the drive that’s taking 100% of the hard drive space, and select Shrink Volume.

- For my 250GB hard drive, I am able to shrink it to 160GB, leaving 77GB free space. 77GB should be enough for Windows XP. If you want more space than what Disk Management can give you, try using Disk Partition Tools from Hiren’s BootCD.

2. Boot up computer with Windows XP CD and install it as normal on the new partition that you’ve created.

3. Once XP is installed, boot up computer with Vista DVD. When you get the screen that says “Install Now“, at the bottom you’ll see “Repair your computer“. If you don’t have a Vista DVD disc, use this method described here.

- Problem after installing Windows XP after Vista, you won’t be able to boot into Vista with Windows XP Boot Loader. You need to use Vista Boot Loader.

4. Select Microsoft Windows Vista and click Next. At System Recovery Options, select “Startup Repair“. Once it’s has finished repairing, click Finish and the system will restart and boot into Vista.

5. Download and install EasyBCD.

6. Run EasyBCD and go to Add/Remove Entries. Select Drive E:\ first and then select Type Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3. Then type the name that you want it to appear in boot loader such as “Microsoft Windows XP” or “Windows XP” or even “XP”. Click Add Entry and Save.

7. Reboot your computer and you should two entries in the Vista bootloader, and can boot into either operating system.

Now that wasn’t too hard right? Next I’ll write about the second scenario which is if you are currently using Windows XP and would like to install Windows Vista.

P/S:If you’re looking for dual booting Windows XP and Vista with XP installer first, click here.

[tags]dualboot, easybcd, vista, xp, windows[/tags]