I have a 150GB Raptor and a 250GB Seagate 7200.10 (both SATA). I want to install Vista Ultimate x64 on the Raptor and XP on the Seagate.

I've read on various sites that I should:

First unplug the Raptor, plug the Seagate in and install XP on the Seagate

Then unplug the Seagate, plug the Raptor in and install Vista on the Raptor.

Once Vista is installed plug the Seagate back in.

After this what do I do? Do I just power on my PC, hit F8 to bring up the BIOS's boot menu, boot into Vista then install VistaBootPro.?

Vista and XP are on separate hard drives, but I want to have a boot menu automatically come up that will let me choose which OS to boot.

I tried doing this today (installing Vista on my Raptor and XP on my eSATA drive). My eSATA drive is recognized as a regular SATA hard drive in my BIOS.

First thing I did was unplug my Raptor, install XP on my eSATA drive then I unplugged my eSATA drive, plugged my Raptor back in and installed Vista on that.

Both OSs installed on their hard drive successfully, but Vista didn't "see" XP on the other hard drive. After both OSs were installed on their hard drives I shut my PC down, plugged both hard drives in and powered the PC back on. Vista booted. There was no boot menu. I can get the device selection thing from my BIOS to show up if I keep pressing escape when my BIOS splash screen shows up and that lets me choose which hard drive to boot.

That's not how I want it though. I thought if I did it this way, Vista would automatically create some kind of boot menu that would come up on its own everytime I turned my PC on or restarted?

I installed VistaBootPRO on my Raptor (in Vista) and whenever I ran it I would get a message saying that a Vista installation was not found on this hard drive. In the "Manage OS Entries" window in VistaBootPRO it does show Vista, but it doesn't show Windows XP (which is installed on the other hard drive).

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, just leave both drives connected and install XP and it will ask you which drive to install to. Make sure you have your F6 driver disk if you are using a newer controller or a RAID controller (and make sure you have the equivalent Vista disk for later). I usually choose drive 0 or the first drive. XP will install and that will be your C drive. Once XP is installed, put the Vsta CD in, boot to it and install Vista and direct the install to the other hard drive. That's it! I don't know where this swapping drive thing came from but it is not necessary. If you do it this way, you will get the boot screen but it will default to Vista. Use Vista Boot Pro to change the default OS and the wait time among other things.

IsLNdbOi wrote:

I have a 150GB Raptor and a 250GB Seagate 7200.10 (both SATA). I want to install Vista Ultimate x64 on the Raptor and XP on the Seagate. I've read on various sites that I should: First unplug the Raptor, plug the Seagate in and install XP on the Seagate Then unplug the Seagate, plug the Raptor in and install Vista on the Raptor. Once Vista is installed plug the Seagate back in.

"various sites" are obviously not as good as PROnetworks

First unplug the Raptor, plug the Seagate in and install XP on the Seagate

Then plug the Raptor in, reboot and make sure that

a) XP boots

b) BIOS/CMOS uses the Seagate as first hard drive, not second

... then install Vista on the Raptor.

Strange things can happen when two different types of hard drives are used in XP/Vista multiboot scenarios, and I would not recommend keeping the Raptor plugged in during XP setup --- but the Seagate MUST be plugged in during vista setup, and you must ensure that Vista setup will detect it as hard drive 0 and System drive.

Ideally, the best way to install Vista is from within your XP environment, and choose clean install not upgrade --- but as your XP is 32-bit you will be unable to do this.

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If anything goes wrong, don't panic just come back to PROnet and the boot experts will be able to help you troubleshoot