Hi

I've finaly got my system up,

but i installed vista first just to see if all was working(forgot my xp disk at the time)

so the position i am in is i have Vista on 1 HDD and XP Home sp2 on the other HDD

now is there an easy way of duel booting these without uninstalling Vista Ultimate.

cheers

Raj

Take a look at this link: http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp I followed their directions in the reverse way that you will be, had XP installed first. Everything worked just as they said.

I've looked at that and that does not seem to work as i am running 2 different HDD

I thought i dont need to look at the whole shrinking partioning thing but when i search for other Drives it doesn't find the other HDD i get the boot menu but it still wont boot comes up with an error and i think its becasue its still searching itself not thet other drive

Duel = Facing off with guns

Dual = the word your're looking for 8^)

cheers GenericName i feel so much better now lol!!!!

I think since you are using the 2 drive method; you need to set the bios to give you the boot screen options instead of bootin from either disk. I'd put em both on the same drive with xp installed 1st, and use the other drive for storage.

I used this procedure when I set up Vista beta - the bios boot disk is the Vista disk

The key to getting to dual booting from this configuration is to have all boot files on the Vista system disk - this includes the files needed to boot XP.

* Install the XP boot files to the Vista system disk. The Vista system disk is C:, the XP system disk is D:. Perform the following from a Command Prompt Run as administrator.
D:
cd \
attrib -r -h -s ntldr
attrib -r -h -s ntdetect.com
attrib -r -h -s boot.ini
copy ntldr c:\
copy ntdetect.com c:\
copy boot.ini c:\
attrib +r +h +s ntldr
attrib +r +h +s ntdetect.com
attrib +r +h +s boot.ini
C:
cd \
edit boot.ini
change rdisk(0) to rdisk(1) in the two places that it occurs
attrib +r +h +s ntldr
attrib +r +h +s ntdetect.com
attrib +r +h +s boot.ini
* Configure the Vista boot process adding XP to the boot menu. Perform the following from a Command Prompt Run as administrator.
cd \
bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
bcdedit /set {current} description "Windows Vista"
I changed the default boot to XP you can leave it as Vista
bcdedit /default {ntldr}

You may not have to create {ntldr}, if it already exists you can just do the sets.
bcdedit /? -- lists the command's arguments and option
bcdedit /enum -- lists the contents of BCD store, like boot.ini