How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) — the step-by-step guide with screenshots

Page 1 – Intro

Scenario: You want to install Vista on your PC alongside your XP installation, on the same drive. You have installed Vista already. (If you have XP installed first, check out our earlier tutorial on how to dual boot Vista and XP with XP installed first.)

Tutorial Summary: We need to shrink the Vista partition on the hard disk and create enough space for an installation of XP. This can be done in three ways – using the GPartEd Live CD, the DISKPART utility on the Vista DVD or the Vista Disk Management GUI – and we’ll cover all three. We’ll then install XP and install EasyBCD to reinstate the Vista bootloader which will be overwritten during the XP installation, and then use EasyBCD to configure Vista’s bootloader to boot the XP partition.

Updated September 2008: This is an updated tutorial, based on our first Windows Vista/XP dual-booting workshop. The main differences are that we are now using Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. EasyBCD has also been updated and this makes some of the steps in our first tutorial redundant – the whole process is now easier.

This tutorial has been tested on a VMWare 6 Workstation.

Install Win 7 via USB in 4 easy steps

After searching and trying about 20 different methods (some very complicated) found online over the past few weeks, I *finally* got my SanDisk Cruzer Micro (8GB) to boot into the Windows 7 Installer. And it was a simple process too! So I’m sharing it here in case anyone else is having similar issues:

1 – Using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (v2.0.6) (Updated link: http://www.bootdisk.com/plan040109/hpflash1.zip), I formatted the flash drive using FAT32 leaving all the boxes unchecked.

2 – I mounted the Windows 7 Beta ISO using Virtual CloneDrive (free, www.slysoft.com).

3 – Then I copied the contents of the ISO (all of the Windows 7 files and folders) over to the SanDisk. That took about 7 minutes.

4 – Lastly, I renamed the file on the flash drive from “BOOTMGR” to “NTLDR”.

That’s it! I was able to finally boot off the SanDisk using my Dell Mini 9 and install Windows 7! It took about an hour, but it runs great. Then I followed the steps outlined here to install the necessary drivers (which wasn’t many since Win7 detects just about everything, nice!).

Next up, going to try these SSD speed tweaks!

Windows XP to Windows 7 USB style tutorial

Windows XP to Windows 7 USB style tutorial. – 01-23-2009, 03:10 PM

---

Well after scouring the net I couldn’t find anyway to make a bootable USB drive from a Windows XP enviroment. Here it goes all this can be done from your netbook.

What you need:
4GB or larger USB thumb drive. I used a PNY version. I actually prefer the Sandisk Cruzer design.
Zipping agent. I used Winrar
Windows 7 x86 ISO
MBRWIZ
Bootsect. This is the tricky one, you must have a Windows XP version.

1. Pop in your flash drive. Navigate to “My Computer”. Right click the flash disk and click format. Format the drive.
2. Click start then run. Type CMD in the run menu to open up a terminal screen.
3. In the terminal screen type “convert x: /fs:ntfs” Where X is your flash drive.
4. Navigate cd to your MBRWIZ folder. Type “MBRWIZ /list” Note the drive number of your flash disk.
5. While in the MBRWIZ folder type “mbrwiz /disk=x /active=1″ Where X is your flash drive.
6. Navigate to your bootsect folder. Type “bootsect /nt60 x:” Where X is your flash drive.
7. In command type “exit”
8. Now go to where you have saved your Windows7 ISO. Right click on the ISO and click extract files. Extract the files to the root of your flash disk.
9. It will eventually ask you about overwriting duplicate files. Click yes to all.
10. Restart your PC and press the “0″ key while the Mini is going through POST.
11. Navigate to USB boot and follow the prompts.