Hello! I followed the: Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer guide word for word, but ran into an error when i tried to boot from CD. First off, id like to post my system specs and make sure im giving the right amount of Shrink for the XP partition.

System Specs:

Dell XPS 410
MS Windows Vista SP1
Intel Core2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz, 2.0GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
288GB Hard Drive

When i create the new volume i did like the guide said, and put the Shrink Volume at 10000. Is that to high, to low, or a good amount given my system specs?

Anyway, i got through all the steps, and then i restarted my computer, hit F12 to go to the boot option, booted from the CD, came ot the screen where it said press F6 for whatever drives, skipped that, and let all the stuff install. So once everything installed, i got the "blue screen of death" with the error: Stop: 0x0000007B. I never got to choose the partition to install XP to, so i had to just keep restarting my computer cause it froze at the blue screen. I was wondering if someone would be able to help me out to fix this, and be able to complete the dual boot for XP. Thanks in advance!

I had a similar problem when installing windows xp sp2 to my other machine, I get the same blue screen error and the only way I solved it was to install another windows xp sp2 over the other xp sp2.

Edit by mod.

wait how did you get past the blue screen? and what drivers is everyone talking about. when ive looked on numerous forums i see everyone talknig about downloading xp drivers...but which ones do i need and where do i get them from? another thing is, ive heard a lot about this SATA driver. i dont have a floppy disk drive, and ive also heard SATA has something to do with that...help anyone? vista is driving me crazy with lagging my game...ahhh!!

i tried this and it still didnt work. more help please...

well i downloaded all the sata drives. the samsung one didnt really work. i got through nLite fine, not sure what the disc is but if you mean burning the drivers to the disc it pretty much worked. so i hit F12 and then boot from something or USB CD Rom and i hit that to boot from cd. went through windows setup for awhile, but it still gave me the error. what can i do from here? JD, is there anyway you could provide some kind of step by step instructions on how to do this from start to finish with my system specs and drivers. i would greatly appreciate it, and all other forms of help as well. thanks in advance.

Alright ive made some progress. I got XP to install by switching my RAID ON to RAID Autodetect. However, i have no internet to download the vista boot pro thing. ive attempted to download the drivers for my network card, but it doesn't seem to be working. any advice from here?

ok i have both xp and vista installed. ive encountered 2 problems though.

1. i cant boot to vista without having RAID ON and i cant boot to XP without having RAID set to RAID Autodetect. is there anyway to fix this?

2. i dont have any sound on xp? how can i fix this. i tried looking for the driver but it didnt work. i have an XPS 410 where should i look?

Hi,
I want to install XP on my preinstalled Dell computer but trying to find all possible information before attemting.
I read the sticky "Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer". This explains putting XP on the computer while Vista stays on. I thought you should first put XP on and then Vista.
JD2066 wrote:
In this case you go to support.dell.com and click drivers. You enter your service tag and download the Windows XP SATA drivers.
So I did this. There are 3 Sata drivers there but no Windows XP sata driver. Does this mean these drivers are already on my system?

My PC now has a 63mb Eisa configuration (something from Dell), a 10Gb recovery partition and a C partition.

What I would try to do is: With my XP CD erase the C partition and make new partitions (3? 4?) - put XP on C and Vista on F then all Data on C. Will I be able to do this without losing the Eisa and Recovery partition?

Will I be able to reach the data both with my XP and with my vista?

@amazone2: You should start a new topic about your install and list what Dell Model you have. It's better to have different people's dual boot questions on different topics as when they are in one topic it's quite confusing.

Heres a couple of things to look at.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....-problems/
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....partition/