Vista/XP Dualboot, no F8 option for XP

Sinister

Sinister

Member
Hello, newbie dualbooter here. Just setup my new laptop with Vista Home Premium SP1and XP Home SP2.
EasyBCD made it a cakewalk. Only problem is when I get to the boot menu
there is no option for F8 advanced boot options for XP, though that option exists
for Vista. Any ideas? I tried searching the forums. Thanks in advance.
 
Hi Sinister, welcome to NST
You have to select XP to allow Vista to hand control to XP's NTLDR, then (quickly whilst NTLDR is executing) hit PF8 so that NTLDR, not bootldr will be the program responding to the PF key.
 
Glad to help Sinister.
You know, I assume, that now you're dual booting Vista and XP, Vista's restore points will be lost every time you boot XP ?
If, like me, you're happy to have windows system restore as an insurance policy against unforeseen disasters, you might want to do something to protect Vista.
Happily, you're in the right place. Look at the sticky thread
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1341
about HnS (Vista Hide 'n Seek) and download yourself a copy, and it will hide Vista from XP for you.
 
Have you tried it ?
I followed all the MS "workarounds", and still have the registry zaps in place, but the recovery points still kept being reset.
I'm not sure of the criteria which affect whether the zaps work or not, but they're not always effective.
A lot of visitors here, (I'm one) came for that exact reason.
Last year, the only option that would work for me was Neogrub from inside EasyBCD, giving an inconvenient but effective 2 stage boot. Now HnS has superseded that method with a neater single boot menu.
But if you're one of the lucky ones for whom the zap works, great.
 
Well it worked for me. I had to edit the registry in both the Vista and XP Registries.
System restore points are O.K. in both OS's.
 
Terry, the hack worked for me as well, as I noted in http://neosmart.net/forums/showpost.php?p=21298&postcount=16.

For those who didn't experience success with it, it may be because they did not create a test restore point after having modified XP's registry and restarting into XP so that any other settings in the registry are saved and that the contents of the partition cannot be viewed in my computer. Other problems may have been user created, as the article referred to a setup of XP on C: and Vista on D: when booted into XP. Users may have systems with different setups and set the wrong letters for the correct corresponding drive letters.

Sinister, the hack works without having to hide XP from Vista. I'd recommend actually unhiding it in Vista for purposes such as retrieving data from XP's partition or scanning the system for viruses unless you are certain you do not want XP's partition to be accessible in Vista.
 
kairozamorro said:
Sinister, the hack works without having to hide XP from Vista. I'd recommend actually unhiding it in Vista for purposes such as retrieving data from XP's partition or scanning the system for viruses unless you are certain you do not want XP's partition to be accessible in Vista.
Click to expand...
Terry I actually prefer having XP offline when booted into Vista, I have a seperate data partition to access in both OS's. Having the XP partition offline makes it safer from getting infected by virii that I might come across while booted in Vista. It also makes virus/registry scans quicker.
 
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