What is the best way to install/set-up an image of my XP Pro disk on my new Vista loaded machine? I want to keep the Vista parition, but primarily use the XP image that came from my current machine. Thanks.

I have cloned my hard drive that is on my old computer. Contains everything...XP OS, apps, and data. I want to copy that cloned hard drive to my new Vista machine. I could format the Vista drive, copy the clone to the newly formatted drive on teh new machine and be off. I have done this when I installed a new disk in my old machine. I would prefer, however, to keep the Vista install, just not use it.

Here are the issues you may encounter when moving the primary hard drive of a computer to another computer as the secondary hard drive:
1. The OS thinks it's installed to the primary drive. It will not boot when it's installed as a secondary drive.
A repair install may fix that.
2. The hardware is different and other drivers maybe needed.
A repair install may fix some drivers. Others will have to be downloaded after the repair and can be hard to find if your computer manufacturer doesn't provide them.
3. If you get the OS to run, Activation will notice that you moved the install to a new machine. If you have a retail license this can be fixed by activating over the internet or over the phone if that doesn't work.
If you have an OEM license then the EULA doesn't permit the transfer to another computer. Weather that means the install won't work or you can use it to buy a retail key and activate the install I'm not sure.

On the repair install above to use it you need to have a Windows XP install disc to boot from. A recovery disc will not work.
Then you press enter for install, press r for repair, select the existing install to repair and press enter.
The repair will reinstall a bunch of system files and system configuration files.
This may fix some driver issues and hard disk problems but it can also cause some installed programs on the Windows XP disk to stop functioning.

Note: While the above may fix it, I have not tested that process with transfer a hard drive and it's not supported by Microsoft.
I would recommend just coping any old data from the Windows XP disc to the new Windows Vista machine and using it.
If you still want to try list your computer model number and I can see if drivers will be available.

I just did a search for "Dell XPS M1330" and found:
1. That it is a laptop. To my knowledge there isn't much room in a laptop for another hard drive. If your plan was to move the hard drive to it I'm not sure that is possible.
2. I looked on Dell's site and it does appear to have Windows XP drivers at http://support.dell.com/suppor.....hidlang=en
So it appears you are ok for drivers.

One other issue I forgot to list above is I think Windows XP only installs one disk driver so if you put the it in another computer with a different disk driver it won't boot.
So even with it being the primary drive you may still have to do a repair to get it to work again.

On the idea of formatting the new hard drive I suppose that could work but you should make sure you have an install disc for Windows Vista before that in the case this moving Windows XP idea doesn't work.

Edit: One other issue is depending on how old the other computer is it may have a different Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) then needed for this computer.
This and the other driver issues that can cause the machine to not boot can be fixed with a repair install.

Another is that if your new laptop has an SATA drive and your old one doesn't then you will need to burn a new Windows XP with the SATA driver needed builtin to it to do the repair install.

In short you may be able to this but it could be a hassle.
I don't know if it would work or not. I think when I first figured out what was needed a few years to move a Windows XP install I just decided to install a new copy and forget about the idea of moving it.