Vista xp boot order

After I put my XP disk in and installed on drive 1, the computer rebooted and displayed an error "Operating system not found" At that point, I rebooted to my Vista dvd and ran a repair. It detects both my Drive 0 the real vista install, and my old vista install on Drive 2.

It offers to repair both, making my drive 0 vista the default OS to boot from. I reboot the computer and see the same message "Operating system not found" message. Try the repair again, but this time nothing is wrong, nothing to repair. I re-install XP again, this time trying on drive 0. No luck, same message. XP works, vista doesn't. In order to install Windows Vista in a dual-boot configuration along with Windows XP, you need to have either a second partition on your existing hard disk or a second hard disk in your system.

You will want to have about 20 GB of free space. You can create a new partition on your existing drive using software such as Partition Magic or Partition Expert which I recommend , both are available online.

Once you have your second partition or second hard disk operational, just insert your Windows Vista disk and restart the machine.

You should see a screen letting you know that Windows Vista is loading. The default settings are set for English, click next to continue. Now select the Install Now button. Now you will need to enter your Microsoft Windows Vista serial number. Then it loads the boot sector of the drive or of the relevant hard disk partition.

This boot sector then loads the rest of the boot blocks. The Windows Boot Manager first looks for an active partition, then accesses the Boot Configuration Data store and uses the information to load the operating system.

The Windows Boot Manager will invoke winload. You should note that the function of winload. The F8 key still remains assigned for advanced boot options once the Windows Boot Manager menu appears. To maintain a consistent boot experience on Extensible Firmware Interface systems that also have a boot manager of their own, the Windows Boot Manager, and hence all of the installed Windows operating systems that can be booted using it, appear as a single entry on the EFI boot manager menu.