How-To Geek

I had all kinds of problems trying to install XP to dual boot with Vista on my HP Pavillion dv6500t. I thought I would post my solutions in case anyone else is running into the same problems.

I successfully partitioned my drive:
C: Vista
D: HP Recovery
F: XP

Then I tried to install XP, which returned an error message saying hard drive not found. After wandering through various forums, I found out that XP doesn't come with drivers for S-ATA drives. So I went to the manufacturer's website (Intel) and downloaded the drivers. The easy option would have been to install them from a floppy drive. But since this is a laptop, that really wasn't an option. The other option would be to disable S-ATA from the bios and install the drivers once XP is installed. However, HP locked down the BIOS and most of the features are unavailable. My only other option was to slipstream the drivers into the XP setup.

To do this, I used Nlite. While I was at it, I also slipstreamed SP2 and the drivers for my network card. But I hit another problem. Nlite only reads inf driver files but the Intel drivers came as an exe file. I tried the easy suggestion of extracting the files with Winrar but that didn't work. So I just installed the drivers on another computer (which was running XP, but I'm not sure that it matters). Then I searched for *.inf and found the Intel folder (C:\Program Files\Intel\...) where the setup dumped the drivers.

Once Nlite finished, I burned a bootable disc from the ISO with Alchohol 120%. Then I rebooted and installed XP.

I had all sorts of problems with VistaBootPro. I followed the steps in the How To guide but I couldn't get it to find XP. I eventually gave up and selected Add New OS Entry. I chose legacy version of Windows and named it XP. Then I rebooted. Now on my boot screen I had Vista, HP Recovery, and XP. But when I tried to boot into XP, I got an error saying the ntldr file was missing. It turned out that I needed to copy the ntldr (a hidden system file) that XP had dumped in my Vista root drive (C: which is my system drive) into the XP root (F:). Also, NtDetect.com needs to be with ntldr.

And I now have a laptop that dual boots into Vista and XP.

Hey, okay. I followed the How TO guide

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....r/#comment

My prob is that at the bootloader screen it shows both Vista and XP. Vista can boot fine, but XP won't boot saying that there was some software or hardware changes that made XP refuse to boot. (the thing that happens when you install a new motherboard)

HP pavillion 2000 laptop. Pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium. XP was fine till I installed the Vista bootloader.

Yeap, you're right on point. Where are those files located? Are they just literally in the C: drive or are there sub folders I need to go through and where do i paste it?

Thanks, my drive letters are exactly the same as yours :D I downloaded the files and will try since I couldn't find the files in the vista drive nor the XP drive. I didn't think of looking in the CD :P I'll let you know how things go thanks

jzng89, I hope it works for you!

The Geek,
Glad I could offer something back. The How To guide was extremely helpful in getting me started. HP just makes everything much more difficult. I can write up more detailed steps if you're planning on making a guide. There are a few details I left out that might be helpful for a step by step guide.

The information about the ntldr file came from this blog post:
http://blog.svoboda.co.nz/Comm.....ecbdd.aspx

It also has instructions on how to run BCDEdit from the command prompt. I did try it during one of my attempts to get XP to boot. It's another option for people who are having problems with VistaBootPro.

I've been working on an article covering how to use nlite to slipstream the drivers in... you are right, the biggest irritation is that all the manufacturers distribute the drivers in idiotic ways. It also makes the article difficult to write.

Just so you know, you can usually use winimage to extract those .exe files (not sure about intel, but it works for the HP drivers from the HP site)

The biggest problem with all this is that I can't seem to duplicate this ntldr error, which would make it a lot easier.

I forgot about this link. It explains more about the ntldr error:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Hey,

Thanks for the info. I followed the instructions, but even though I copied ntldr and ntdetect.com to my XP drive, my laptop still said that the file was missing when I tried to load XP. Does anybody know what I can do? I have an Acer 9410.

Thanks

Be sure and post back if that fixes the issue, so we can update the info for everybody.

What exactly is the error message? Does it say the ntldr file is missing?

Do you have the boot.ini file with ntldr and ntdetect.com?

And while I'm here, I found the Microsoft article dealing with Vista/XP dual bootloaders:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529