Easily Set Default OS in a Windows Vista and XP Dual-boot Setup
If you are running a dual-boot setup with more than one Windows operating system, It's pretty easy to configure the default boot operating system with the GUI interface. Note that if you are using Windows Vista as one of the operating systems, you will need to make this change from Vista, not XP.
First, you'll need to right click on Computer and select Properties:
Next, click Advanced System Settings
Now click on the Settings button under Startup and Recovery
And just select the operating system you want to use:
Easy stuff. You could also use the bcdedit command to do the same thing from the command line, but it's probably easier this way.
The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 01/21/07 and tagged with: Windows Vista, System Administration
This is very very nice tips. Thanks for this tips.
Wow i have been looking for this since i dual booted vista!!!!
Thank you
Hi, I am writing in with this wierd or rather crazy issue that I am facing. The thing is that I had installed and was using VISTA RC1 till some days ago one of my frnds formatted the drive that I was using for VISTA. The system was in safe-mode hence allowed the format. Now the thing is that I am having the VISTA OS while booting which obviously fails and the problem is that it is set as the default choice. I wanted to know if there is a method to remove this without installing VISTA again.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in Advance.
Shiva,
try recovery cd, and goto restore options where you find urselves.
I've installed Windows Vista 4-5 months ago and now before a week I've installed windows XP.
Now the problem is when I start my computer, it does not ask which OS I want to use. It starts with Windows XP everytime. I can not use the Windows Vista installed on the other drive.
Can anyone solve my problem????????
Copy bootsect.exe from the boot folder of your Windows Vista DVD and paste it into your Windows XP Windows\system32 folder…
Then press Start and select Run and type:
bootsect /NT60 ALL
This pulls all Windows operating systems into the Windows Vista boot menu.
I hope this works for you, Simon…
I've installed Windows Vista 3 months ago and now before 2 day ago I've installed windows XP.
Now the problem is when I start my computer, it does not ask which OS I want to use. It starts with Vista everytime. I can not use the Windows xp installed on the other drive.
and i dosen't show the xp on the Startup and Recovery settings… What do i do?
Hi I have installed both XP and Vista in Dualboot fashion on my HP Tablet. How can I make datafiles, such as "My Document" folders etc accessible to both OSs?
Hello Geek,
Your website is great. I have found all kinds of neat ways to customize my new laptop with Vista on it. My question is, what do I do to get the Start up and Recovery Dialog to show my external drive with its winxp set up? I tried to do as you suggest, but the drop down only shows Vista, even though the external drive (two partitions, with a clone of the old winxp C drive on one of them.) is hooked up. Hmmmm…
I would like to boot the winxp only at certain times, so I can run an old CAD prog that Vista won't run. I literally have years of work done with this CAD prog, and gotta figure out how to run it through the Toshiba P205-S6237.
Thanks
osho
I would try copying the bootsect.exe as suggested, but OF COURSE I bought this thing with Vista already installed, and don't have the disk. Can I get this bootsect.exe somewhere else?
try useing EasyBCD, worked for me.
Sico i have the same problem now the problem is my laptop came widout da Vista DVD (Preinstalled) now where do i get the bootsect.exe???
Our problem is a little different. For some reason, Vista priority for boot-up has changed has changed so it looks for a system disk. We can change it each time by during start-up, but not clear how this happened or how to change the priority back to the hard drive permanently,
I have vista pre-installed and simply hate it to be frank…
can i install xp,if yes please tell me how.
thanks.
I bought a new pc that unfortunately came with Vista Home premium.I would like to run my XPpro on it instead..can that be done? if not how do I do as others here have and set it up to dual boot? am not that techy and have never set up a dual boot..I did download a program called virtual pc, but have yet to understand how to use it for my xp…
thanks for your post steve, you actually clearified what i was trying to ask,as i have a similar problem.
Thanks so much for that Vista post. I was pulling my hair out trying to fix it!!!!! thanks again
hi, i've got a simular problem that i have dual xp64-vista64 and when the screen to change os come up my keyboard dosn't work so i can't change the OS, i have a logitech G15 usb keyboard, if any one can help that would be great.
HELLO GEEK,
Well i just bought a laptop 2 months back. It just came with the vista home premium installed in it.i even dint get a recovery cd or i neither got any OP cd's. well now when i was trying to install the VB programing the OP system never enables it to install.I even bought a printer which is now not getting installed to the laptop b'cos of the operating system.any usb's getting connected asks plenty of security steps to be followed.i think it is a safe OP system, but then was not happy.like to change to xp,what should i do? should i format vista? how can i install xp on my laptop? could u just plz tell me the procedures for formatting it and installing xp?all i have is an xp cd.no recovery or bootup cds.plz help… raj
I have two hard disks(Sata),
I have Xp Pro installd first, and on the second Installd Vista Ultimate.
If both hard disk conected xp boot, and I can run Vista only if disconect the disk with XP.
I find the seting but I find Vista alone, can't find earlier windows.
How can make dual booting?
I've installed Windows Vista 4-5 months ago and now before a week I've installed windows XP.
Now the problem is when I start my computer, it does not ask which OS I want to use. It starts with Windows XP everytime. I can not use the Windows Vista installed on the other drive.
Can anyone solve my problem????????
I installed Windows Vista on my Hard drive and then I installed XP. Now windows xp boots up automatically and doesn't giv me a choice. I tried the solution SiCo posted. It doesn't work.
Hi Geek,
Need your help, my computer is not working the OS, the two fan inside keep working and doesn't stop, and the light from the hard drive is on, the computer no react .
I think is a virus … is there something can I do to start on … I use the XP home edition…
Please help!
Hi got a laptop recently, but it comes with the bloody Windows Vista Base Edition. I would like to change it to Windows XP. How to change it? I am not able to do this? Is there any one to help me.
To tell all the steps to change XP from VISTA.
Raj Kiran
I have two 500gb drives in my computer, one Vista the other XP pro. How do I setup a dual boot?
Both are legal and current.
Can you help?
Rich Grihalva
From my experience of my system of dual boot on HP machine….as system restarts, hit ESC key….it will show you a choice of which OS system to boot.
…by the way….. I installed the XP and the VISTA in 2 seperate partition.
Wow thank you u so much took me hours to find out how and never found it till i found this on google.com took me 1min thank u so much
Hey i need help on something… i have actually installed Vista an XP and managed to dual boot it… its almost too easy now… but i have a problem which i tried to resolved and only made it worse… I had to reformat the Vista partition due to some probs and too many spyware and such… and now that i reformated Vista i cant dual boot again… so i did the dual boot process using VistaBootPro from Vista to run XP… once i restarted the PC booted a black screen and it said UNABLE TO FIND NTRLD - PRESS CTRL+ALT+DEL TO RESTART… and evrytime i restart it shows the same thing… I had to re-install Vista wasting another 2 hours… Please tell me theres a way to dual boot again and that i don't have to re-install XP in order to dual boot again…
Tnx in advance =]
Don't use Vista Boot Pro, use easy BCD from neosmart. It's open source and it actually works.
I use it on my PC.
Note: I am not responsible for any damage to ur PC caused by dual (or even triple) booting. Use at ur own risk.
GOD BLESS YOU
I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS A LONG TIME
I have a problem. i have installed XP Professional over Vista and used VistaBootPro to setup dual boot. When i reboot, i see options to select Windows Vista or Earlier Versions of Windows. However, when i select Windows XP, i get an error saying NTLDR missing. I have installed Vista and XP to separate drives. Any help Appretiated!!
I have the same problem as Drexziel up there. I cant boot after installing vista on a new sata hardrive.. I have tried it 6 times now and I get the same message.
The Story,
boot loader is messed up and says there are missing files and I can’t boot xp or vista… so I had to run my XP disk and recover the C:\windows boot.ini file and repair it back to normal so I could boot xp…
It all happened on first boot up, it tried vista and failed and then the fall back to xp and it failed leaving a black screen saying “cannot find file boot/ntlr “(or something) “press tab for helpâ€? and then goes to command line saying press "cntrl alt del" or "TAB" for help ….or something like that. I cant remember the exact file at the moment.
Can anyone shed light on the problem with the boot loader or whats causing this in my case or what can i do as I have now tried to reinstall 6 times and I get the same deal from both x64 and x86.. cheers
spec
athlon64 5600×2
1gb ram
1 ide harddrive 160gb - with XP on it
1 sata hardrive 160gb - trying to put vista on it
GF7600gto
XPSP2
Sorry I forgot to mention, I can't get Vista to load so I cant use the GUI interface or EasyBCD in vista.
Im having a strange problem with vista. I recently re formatted my hard drive using the recovery disk. when I boot it shows windows vista as being installed twice ?
@Kris…. are you sure you haven't got the vista dvd in the drive?….
Nope, I used this tutorial and it skips that step but thanks anyway =]
I have an everex stepnote laptop which came with win vista basic and i want xp can anyone tell me where i can get my drivers plz???????????????
hey the model# for my stepnote is NC1502, if that might help
the model # for my laptop is Everex NC 1502 series do u kno where to get my drivers plz???????
stepnote NC1502 - HERE YOU GO http://drivers.softpedia.com/progSearch
Hi this is a wonderful site . I would apprciate if u can help me out, i've bought a lappy make hp pavillion vista home premium preinstalled. Im not able to install printer, autocad, i dont have the drivers nor the vista cd since its preinstalled i wanna have dual booting for xp , pls help me what to do, im just fedup with vista
i don't know if some body tried this b4…my laptob came with XP home, and i instaled vistapremium,in the D:/ and in the 3rd partition i named F: i just instald xp pro, but in the boot screen ther's only 2 OS, vista is gone ? ? can you help me plz
thx in advance
I've installed Windows Vista and now before a week I've installed windows XP.
Now the problem is when I start my computer, it does not ask which OS I want to use. It starts with Windows XP everytime. I can not use the Windows Vista installed on the other drive.
i waiting for your replay
Thank you!
You are the GEEK!
This tip just made my life sooooo much more pleasant
Hello! I still have some problems, I made my hdd in few partitions, at the first part I installed Vista, in seconds Suse and in third part XP.
In Vista I can't see XP and Suse OS. So if one time i lunch Vista I cant change other OS. I tryed to find it on system setting, also used EasyBCD and no results.
When I lunch XP, also I cant do nothing because XP can't see Suse partitions, also if i change boot partition to vista, after restarting my PC dont working, uploading just black screen.
Thnx for help :]]
I tried installing xp on a second partition after already running vista for a while. The installation went ok, but now I can't boot into Vista. It always goes to xp. I tried moving the boot flag to vista using diskpart, computer management and the gparted live cd. It still boots to xp.
Sam>>>>>> try to boot from vista DVD you'll have the chice to instal a fresh copy and repair your computer. click "repair my computer" it should repair the boot file
oopax that worked for me, and i did the same as Sam thnks!!
HI,, if i change my default operating system to windows XP \, how could i get back to wnidows vista?
if i change my default operating system from Vista to Xp,, will the Vista be damage?
tnx
hey dude, sorry to be bothering you with this because i bet alot of us iiots do it, but i stupdily put winxp sp2 on my sisters laptop because i hate vista. thinking id be able to boot up which ever each of us wanted to use….
one mistake i made was to put both on ONE partition, i already had 2 so i used C: for both operating systems and D: for storage of my files, i need to figure out how to get into vista as i cant choose… and i dont have a disc the laptop came with it installed. is there anyhting i can do to fix it or even delete xp if i have to
thanks in advance mate
shaun
i have a successful dual boot configuration with fedora 9 and vista. However, Fedora is the default startup operating system. how can i change this so that vista is the default OS? Pls Reply!
P.S. i dont have the vista installation CD. It came pre-installed