Please guide me..

[neville]

I currently have EasyBCD dual boot with the following setup:
Primary Boot: Vista x64
Secondary Boot: XP Pro

I want to make XP the primary boot drive and reinstall Vista (having driver problems) and make it the as the secondary boot. I would also like to use newer version of EasyBCD.

Please guide me. Thanks.

 

[Coolname007]

Hi Neville. Welcome to NST.
Unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to boot Vista from the XP drive...at least not with the XP bootloader. While it would be possible to install Vista's bootloader to that drive, and then use it to boot both XP and Vista, it would take a lot more work.
Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but is there some reason why you want the XP drive to be first in the boot seqence in the BIOS, instead of the Vista drive? You should be able to easily boot into XP from Vista's drive, with the help of EasyBCD. 2.0 Beta (which has an auto-configurator for XP's boot.ini) can be downloaded here.

-Coolname007

EDIT: Or am I misunderstanding you, and you're trying to make XP be the default OS to boot into after the timeout from the Vista boot menu, instead of Vista? If that's the case, then you can easily make XP the default by going to the Change Settings section of EasyBCD, and changing it there.

 

[neville]

too many problems with vista

Thanks for the reply. I'm having too many problems with Vista but XP Pro has settled nicely with my apps. So, I want to work primarily in XP Pro which I installed in the dual boot because of Vista problems. Since XP is working well, I don't want to have to reinstall it and I'm afraid to try the disc image route. I would like to try Vista again but it's going to take a reintall to use it. My concern is whether I will be able to get to XP after I erase the Vista partition and reinstall it.

 

[Coolname007]

How are you booting to XP now? Directly from the XP drive, or from an XP entry in your Vista boot menu? Yes, you should be able to easily get back into XP after erasing the partition Vista's installed to, and then reinstalling Vista, by simply going into EasyBCD and adding an entry to boot XP to your Vista bootloader.

-Coolname007

 

[neville]

How are you booting to XP now? Directly from the XP drive, or from an XP entry in your Vista boot menu? Yes, you should be able to easily get back into XP after erasing the partition Vista's installed to, and then reinstalling Vista, by simply going into EasyBCD and adding an entry to boot XP to your Vista bootloader.

-Coolname007

I'm booting from the XP entry in the Vista boot menu (I think) via EasyBCD. It appears from your reply that it is not possible to boot into Vista with XP as the primary boot. What would I have to do to simply retain XP as is without Vista? In other words, can I simply erase the Vista partition and set up XP Pro as the sole OS without having to reinstall XP? Thanks again.

 

[Coolname007]

I'm booting from the XP entry in the Vista boot menu (I think) via EasyBCD. It appears from your reply that it is not possible to boot into Vista with XP as the primary boot.

Possible, but you would be causing yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble doing it that way, because you would have to install Vista's bootloader on XP's drive in order to be able to boot into Vista from that drive.
But it depends on what you mean by "primary boot". If you're simply asking is it possible to have your computer boot into XP by default, after the timeout, if another boot entry is not selected, then yes, that could be easily achieved by going to the Change Setting section in EasyBCD, and changing which boot entry is default.

What would I have to do to simply retain XP as is without Vista? In other words, can I simply erase the Vista partition and set up XP Pro as the sole OS without having to reinstall XP? Thanks again.

Sure. If you want to get rid of Vista completely, just change the boot order in the BIOS, and put your XP drive first instead of Vista's. And then from XP, erase or delete Vista's partition, and you should be good to go.

-Coolname007