Bought new system HP pavillion AMD phenomX4, SATA, vista64, nvidia grapgics card and have installed via rocketfish USB IDE external drive with my old XP version and have a Backup MYbook drive. Also have the 4 media card slots.

I have transferred what files I can and wish to play my old games, etc. I have followed the query about dual boot et al and started the partition process as mentioned, downloaded vistabootpro but my XP is on the external drive. D drive is used by the "HP Factory Image" and have assigned the partition as stated instead to E and setting the smartmedia drive to L. My old IDE drive (Rocketfish USB external) is currently set as K drive and am stuck since I cannot access the Xp.

I don't understand why I need to set up XP on the C drive to begin with nor how to extract my XP from the drive. I have tried to follow the advise from several seeming threads but I don't think they apply or am too much a novice to "get it."

Any help appreciated. jesster

If you have the time and energy, here are a few cookbooks. I don't know what they are worth, but they sound very sophisticated.

http://articles.techrepublic.c.....28902.html

http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8

PS: If you want to go the route that Justin suggests, here is a starting point. Don't get confused by the W7 title, works just as well for XP.