So…you unplugged your Windows XP hard drive before Windows Vista setup, so that you didn’t fubar your XP installation. Both XP and Vista boot fine when you change the boot drive order in the BIOS, effectively changing the Windows system drive each time, but that gets a bit tiresome.

Windows XP needs the following files to be on the system drive for it to be able to boot;

boot.ini
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr

and Windows Vista needs these files to be on the system drive for it to be able to boot;

Boot (folder and contents, most importantly the BCD store)
bootmgr

To sort this out, follow the steps below:



1. Plug both drives in and set the Windows XP drive to be the boot drive in the BIOS. This will make it the system drive and although it doesn’t really matter whether the XP or Vista drive is the system drive, it tends to be easier to manage and control booting, from Windows XP.

2. Open Disk Management (right click My Computer>Manage) and go to Disk Management to check that your XP drive is your system drive, although the fact that you were able to boot to XP should already confirm that.

3. Open Windows Explorer and make sure you set Folder Options in Control Panel to be able to see hidden files and files and unhide protected operating system files. You’ll find folder options in the same place in Vista if you select Classic View for Control Panel.

4. Copy the folder Boot and the file bootmgr from your Vista installation drive and paste it to your XP installation drive.

Disk Management
Files to be copied…………………………...Files copied




5. Download and install VistaBootPRO and then open it to the Bootloader tab. Select “Reinstall the Vista bootloader” and press Apply.

Reinstall the Vista booloader




6. Now go to the Manage OS Entries tab and select “Add new operating system entry”and make sure you select “Windows Legacy”, give the entry a name like “Windows XP”, select the drive letter you have ntldr on as the drive letter and press Apply (This drive letter must also be your system drive which is set to boot in the BIOS). You can now choose which entry you want to be the default to which the system will boot by default.

Add new XP entry




Reboot and choose which Operating System you want to boot to. QED

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