I'm going to start off with my whole process on how I did this. I am performing this in a Compaq SR5310F Desktop computer that originally came with Vista Home Premium:
Within Vista, I opened the Disk Management utility. I then shrunk the volume and left myself with exactly 40GB of unallocated space for my XP installation. I then booted from my XP Pro cd, selected that unallocated space, formatted it using NTFS, then installed XP. It copied all the files fine, but when it reboots to launch the GUI of the installation, I get a message saying, "Error loading operating system"
I figured something like this would happen because XP cannot recognize Vista and I have just replaced the vista boot loader with the XP bootloader. So, I popped in my Vista home premium disk, went to the Startup Repair, let it run. It told me that it fixed any problems and that I should reboot my computer. I figured it had replaced the bootloader with Vista's and it would boot to Vista...but I am still getting the "Error loading operating system" message.
I have tried installing these two OSs a couple different ways...basically the only differences were where I created the partition for XP. I tried creating the partition for XP while installing vista also, but still have the same results. I tried just installing XP in the unallocated space instead of defining a drive letter before installing, but still the same results.
I have a feeling that if I installed XP first, and then vista, the vista bootloader would then be installed and this would all work. but i know its possible to do this with vista installed first and I want to know how. Am I missing something??
Within Vista, I opened the Disk Management utility. I then shrunk the volume and left myself with exactly 40GB of unallocated space for my XP installation. I then booted from my XP Pro cd, selected that unallocated space, formatted it using NTFS, then installed XP. It copied all the files fine, but when it reboots to launch the GUI of the installation, I get a message saying, "Error loading operating system"
I figured something like this would happen because XP cannot recognize Vista and I have just replaced the vista boot loader with the XP bootloader. So, I popped in my Vista home premium disk, went to the Startup Repair, let it run. It told me that it fixed any problems and that I should reboot my computer. I figured it had replaced the bootloader with Vista's and it would boot to Vista...but I am still getting the "Error loading operating system" message.
I have tried installing these two OSs a couple different ways...basically the only differences were where I created the partition for XP. I tried creating the partition for XP while installing vista also, but still have the same results. I tried just installing XP in the unallocated space instead of defining a drive letter before installing, but still the same results.
I have a feeling that if I installed XP first, and then vista, the vista bootloader would then be installed and this would all work. but i know its possible to do this with vista installed first and I want to know how. Am I missing something??