Dual Booting Windows Xp And Vista With Vista Installed First : Free Programs, Utilities and Apps11/12/2017 Multibooters, Vista Dual and Multibooting. The XP and Vista boot process in general. The Windows dual and multiboot method of operation. The limitations of the Windows method and some alternatives. How third- party bootmanagers operate. The information on this page also applies to Windows 7 - except where indicated. I have learned from experience that most people will consider the computer boot sequence as something that is almost beyond their comprehension. Many guides or examinations are often overly technical and will just confuse the issue even further, or sap the reader's will to live. This guide will try to explain only what you really need to know. I believe it is not necessary to understand the finer details of everything that is going on, that simply being aware of the general flow of the boot sequence is more than enough to allow you to make the correct choices when setting up or reconfiguring your multiboot system. ![]() A straightforward introductory guide to the boot process in general and the Vista dual and multiboot method of operation. Goes on to cover how to avoid the pitfalls. Your newly purchased computer or the one you just built has Windows 8 installed. You now want to install Windows 7 as a second operating system thus creating a Dual. A start-to-finish, step-by-step guide to properly installing Windows Vista. Please read through this entire guide before doing anything. What follows may seem over simplified, but it is just about all you really need to understand. The boot process is one small program doing its job and then starting the next program in the sequence. Typically there will be either 4 or 5 small programs, the last being the one that actually starts the operating system. Most problems arise quite simply because one program cannot find the next one in the chain. If you know where each program is, which one it needs to find next, then if necessary point it to that next program, then you have mastered multibooting. There’s nothing really complicated or mystical about it. We really are talking about a few small programs that have to start in the correct order. Anyone who has used a computer for more than 5 minutes will know what programs are and will be perfectly comfortable using them. The boot sequence programs hold no secrets or magical powers, they are just like any other program, coded ones and zeros that tell the computer what to do. Some do have strange names that have almost passed into legend and are often uttered with a sense of reverence and wonderment. They conjure up visions of unknowable secrets, even among some seasoned IT pros. I don’t want to shatter anyone’s beliefs, but here is the truth. ![]() The Boot Sequence Programs. The first program is built into your computer's motherboard. It is on a small chip and so is always in the same place so that when the computer is turned on it knows where to find it. This program is called the BIOS. It will do its job and then look for and start the next program. The BIOS is pretty clever and can actually search for the next program and look in various places for it. Removing a dual boot can be dangerous, and it does not guarantee that Windows will forget about the second boot sector. This is your first step in removing the boot. So you got your shiny new pre-installed Windows 7 computer over the holidays, but you want to have trusty XP standing by in a dual boot setup. Today we’ll walk. VLite is a Windows Vista Configuration Tool that creates Vista Lite How to Repair Windows 7, 8 or Vista Without the Install DVD How to Slipstream Windows XP Service. How to replace Windows XP with Linux for free. A step by step tutorial with images. Normally it will find it all by itself, so you don’t usually have to do anything, but you do have the option if need be of setting the BIOS boot order so that it will look in the place you want it to – floppy, CD, hard drive, etc. If you are booting an OS on the hard drive then the next program is, unsurprisingly, on the hard drive. To make it easy for the bios to find the second program it is always put in the same place and the bios will only look in that place. It is always right at the very beginning of the drive, starting on the first bytes of the very first sector. This program is commonly called the MBR (Master Boot Record), but this is a little misleading because the MBR is actually the bootprogram and the partition table. The most common name for the bootprogram part of the MBR is the Initial Program Loader (IPL). Just like the BIOS program the IPL is often not specific to any OS, so it won't care if it’s Windows or Linux that is on the hard drive, it only wants to start the next little program. The Microsoft IPL is very small and quite limited and its main job is just to find and start that next program in the chain. It looks at the partition table to see if any of the entries there is waving a flag in the air and shouting - Pick Me! If you take the flag away from one partition and give it to another then the IPL will then pick that partition and start that one’s little program. When you move the flag you are not changing anything else about a partition or its details in the partition table, you are literally just moving a pointer that tells the IPL which partition to pick. The partition with the flag is called the Active partition, so changing or setting the active partition is simply moving a pointer, (the correct tech- speak is actually flag). The third little program in the chain is at the very beginning of the partition. This one is called the PBR (partition boot record) or in some cases it can be called the VBR (volume boot record). Now the PBR will do its job and then start the next program. However, unlike the BIOS and IPL, the PBR is operating system specific and needs to know the name and location of the file it has to start. This next file will be different for various operating systems, so during the install of an OS the PBR will be written with the information necessary to find the correct file. For Win. NT before Vista this will be ntldr, which will always just be in the root of the partition. That is it will not be inside any folder or directory, but just right there on its own, next to the Windows and Program Files folders. For all Win. NT before Vista the ntldr will be the 4th and last program in the boot sequence chain. It's called the bootloader and it is the one that does the actual job of starting Windows from the System. It is indeed separate and not connected in any way to the following partitions. Convention is to reserve a small section of the drive specifically for the MBR to reside on. I’ve shown the PBR as a separate section but it is actually a part of the partition it is in. Windows reserves the first 1. The Vista and Win. In old Win. NT the ntldr was both bootmanager and bootloader, but from Vista these two functions have been separated out into two different programs. The bootmanager function of finding and selecting the OS to be started is now called bootmgr. The bootloader function of actually starting the OS is now a new file called winload. The bootmgr program stays in the root of the partition and winload. System. 32 folder alongside the Windows OS it has to start. This has added an extra step to the boot sequence chain, so in Vista it is the 5th program that starts Windows. Vista boot sequence: -BIOS - IPL - PBR - bootmgr - winload. Windows. If you install Vista to a computer that already has a legacy Win. NT installed on it and you don't take precautions to the contrary, then the Microsoft bootmanager will be automatically configured for dual booting. The previous Windows install will be modified to accommodate the method of operation necessary for bootmgr and ntldr to coexist. The boot sequence for Vista will be just as it was in the example above when Vista was the only OS on the hard drive. The same 5 programs run in the same order. Vista dual boot sequence: -BIOS - IPL - PBR - bootmgr - winload. Windows. Notice however that the Vista install has placed bootmgr and the BCD file on the partition of the previous Windows install. Also that the XP partition's PBR has been replaced with a Vista one, so that it knows to look for bootmgr instead of ntldr. On bootup it will be bootmgr that will halt the process and offer the boot menu. On selecting Vista, bootmgr will jump directly to winload. Vista System. 32 folder, skipping the Vista partition PBR. The Vista partition may or may not get a valid PBR but this won’t be used anyway as part of the boot sequence chain. If you did at this point change the Active partition so the IPL would directly start the Vista partition's PBR, you would just get an error message that something was missing. This adds an extra step and so XP now also has 5 programs in the sequence. XP dual boot sequence: -BIOS - IPL - PBR - bootmgr - ntldr - Windows. In old Win. NT the ntldr consults the boot. Windows/System. 32 folder it has to target. The ntldr then uses the BIOS to locate the hard drive and the Partition Table to locate the partition. In Vista and Win. BCD file to find out which hard drive and partition it should go to, but it does not use the BIOS or the partition table to locate the drive or partition. See Vista's Boot Files. If you already have a Windows dualboot and then add Vista as a third OS then you will not get three choices from the new Vista boot menu, because the original ntldr will continue to be used to select which of the old OSes to boot. Each of the bootmanagers in the chain will offer separate boot menus. Vista's bootmgr will offer 2 choices of Vista and previous OSes, then ntldr will display your original boot menu. Overall the multiboot sequence is no different to the dualboot one. Both bootmgr and ntldr will always be on the active partition of the boot hard drive and both will ignore PBRs and jump directly to Windows in the System. The middle partition Windows will be started as it originally was by the ntldr on the active first partition, except of course with bootmgr now in the chain. Sequence for all old Win. NT is the same: -BIOS - IPL - PBR - bootmgr - ntldr - Windows. No matter how many Windows OSes or hard drives you have the boot sequence will always be the same and only the boot drive active partition will have an ntldr and bootmgr, through which all the others must be booted. Each Vista and will be started by bootmgr and each of the older Win. NT will be started by ntldr. Vista sequence is the same as always: -BIOS - IPL - PBR - bootmgr - winload - Windows. With no ntldr or bootmgr on the second hard drive then it cannot be made the boot drive in the computer and have any of its OSes directly started. An install of Vista to a second or higher drive will only write a Vista IPL to that drive's MBR if there is no IPL already present, so an older Win. NT IPL will be left in place. If you do need to get such a drive to be bootable then any Windows IPL since Win.
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