Success F80S Dual Boot Vista & XP

Vpoint7

New Member
[FONT=&quot]Hi guys, I manage to make dual boot with Vista Home Premium and XP Professional into my laptop. I follow the guide provided from this site and it works well with preinstalled Vista as my primary Windows from the beginning.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I bought a new laptop on 3rd Aug 2008, Asus F80S (250Gb, AR5007EG build-in, Memory of 2Gb, with processor Duo T5750, Vista Premium OS). It has 2 partition with C: VistaOS | D: Data | E : DVD RW Drive. C: drive has 116Gb & D: drive 106Gb. So total of both space is 222Gb. When I open the Disk Management of Vista Premium, there is one more drive that has no label with the size of 10Gb. This hidden drive is not shown on My Computer for the Recovery purpose. Now the total size of space of F80S is 232GB. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Here are the steps to make dual boot without loosing any data from Vista Premium. As for dual boot installation, using Vista Disk Management, I shrink my C: for 30Gb, means I use the free space available from C: to make new partition on My Computer. This new partition will be E: with 30Gb of space after formatted as NTFS in Vista and here is where the WinXp will be installed to. To make it alphabetical order, I change drive E: to D: and original D: to E:. Drive D: is data from the beginning, ignore that notice that says “Some data that rely on this drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue?”.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]To begin,[/FONT]

  • [FONT=&quot]I change BIOS settings to boot from CD. (Done by press F2, F12, DEL or any depending on type of the laptop).[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Put the CD in, so that you will boot from CD, e.g : “Press Any Key To Boot From CD…”. Press any button will begin the boot CD process.[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Press F6 if you have SATA drives in the laptop, as for F80S, is it SATA type HDD, somehow, a message appeared no SATA drive found. So I begin the installation with F8 to agree the terms of installation.[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]You will be presented with hard drive list and partition. Select the partition with 30Gb (29999kb) size and press enter on it to make installation into this drive with NTFS system. [/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Once XP setup finish, you have to download and install the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework. [/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Download and install the latest version of EasyBCD.[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Both program above is installed in fresh WinXP, run EasyBCD (in WinXP) program go to the "Manage Bootloader" page, and select "Reinstall the Vista Bootloader" then "Write MBR" to get the Vista bootloader back.[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Once that's done, head on to the "Add/Remove Entries" page and select "Windows NT/2k/XP/2003" from the drop-down list, give it a name (I put Microsoft Windows X), then press "Add Entry" to finish. [/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Reboot and enjoy your dual windows boot.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]What happen if I load straight to Vista without presented to Windows Boot Loader at first?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]-Continue boot into your Vista, head to D: where WinXP installed to, go to Program Files > NeoSmart Technology > EasyBCD > EasyBCD.exe to load the program. Now, repeat the step 7 & 8 above and reboot your Vista.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I manage to get Windows Boot Loader, somehow when I choose to boot into WinXP, it says /NTLDR is missing?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]-Follow these steps :[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]1. Insert the [FONT=&quot]Windows CD[/FONT] and start the computer.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2. When the [FONT=&quot]Welcome to Setup[/FONT] screen appears, press [FONT=&quot]R [/FONT][FONT=&quot](repair)[/FONT].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]3. Type a number corresponding to the Windows installation you wish to repair (usually [FONT=&quot]1 [/FONT][FONT=&quot]but it is 2 for me[/FONT]) and press [FONT=&quot]Enter[/FONT].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]4. When prompted, type the [FONT=&quot]administrator password[/FONT] and press [FONT=&quot]Enter[/FONT].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]5. From the command prompt, copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the i386 folder of the CD to the root folder of the hard drive. In the example commands given below, D: is the hard drive where WinXP installed in and F: is the CD-ROM drive. You will need to change the drive letters if appropriate:
[FONT=&quot]COPY F:\I386\NTLDR D:\[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]COPY F:\I386\NTDETECT.COM D:\[/FONT]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]6.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and [FONT=&quot]restart the computer[/FONT].[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]During the use of EasyBCD program, I put the name “Microsoft Windows X” as for testing purpose. After the step 9, I was not able to have dual boot yet. So I have to try an error whether I am lucky or not. I was headed straight away boot into Vista without the boot loader. After some changes such above, I manage to get windows boot loader to load (Microsoft Windows Vista for Vista and Microsoft Windows X is WinXP). Now, I able to access both windows without any problem. Its odd without logic reason. Somehow, the name “Microsoft Windows X” is not a nice name, so I boot into Vista and change the name to “Microsoft Windows XP”, after reboot, boot loader appeared and the name has changed to Microsoft Windows XP. When I try to boot into WinXP, an error occurred, /NTLDR is missing. The 1st option is reinstall WinXP as majority says it is. Been doing this for 3 times, result? No changes at all, /NTLDR is still missing. As for 2nd option, put boot cd of XP, give it a copy of missing file, problem solve. A small change (name on boot loader), brought me to do more extra job but it works. You guys have a constructive solution, so I think it is worth to share it here. Thank You.[/FONT]
 
Hey Vpoint7, welcome to NST :smile:

Glad you found the guides usful. Feel free to post if you have any questions.

Cheers
 
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