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General discussion

Windows vista and XP on seperate hard drives

Feb 17, 2007 10:30PM PST

I am attempting to operate my computer with Vista and XP on seperate hard drives and booting the os that I need at that time. However, when connected at the same time, no matter which one I am booting from vista affects the booting of both. Initially, when only one is connected, each boots fin. But when I connect them both for the first time, XP will not boot and I have to disconnect the Vista hard drive and then boot XP from the last known good config. Vista is another mess. When I attempt to boot vista with the XP hard drive connected I cannot boot and get an error message that something is wrong and I should attempt to repair using the vista cd. When I do, I am only able to get limited functions in the vista os. Any ideas?

Discussion is locked

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Users are....
Feb 18, 2007 12:40AM PST

...having problems installing and running Vista on a single HD with no other OS on another drive. Be happy for now, that you can get it going at all. Are you sure Vista supports what you want to do ?

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Some questions...
Feb 18, 2007 1:01AM PST

1.) Which did you install first, XP or Vista?

2.) When you installed the second OS, was the hard drive containing the other connected?

3.) What are the jumper settings on the two hard drives?

4.) Do you know if your system BIOS supports boot-time drive selection?

5.) Were these clean installations of indows, upgrades, or transfers from another computer?

Let us know.
John

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Windows vista and XP on seperate hard drives
Feb 18, 2007 2:09AM PST

hi mine is set up on two drives, at boot i just press f11 and that on my pc, brings up the option of what drive to boot from works a treat. when i installed vista i did disconnect the xp drive. after vista installed i put back the xp drive. first time i have done anything like this before, so i expect there is a better way, but as i say works a treat for me.