Nowadays, more and more PCs are pre-installed with Windows Vista at the factory, which brings a lot of convenience to users —— although the pre-installed Windows Vista is mostly a simplified version like Home Basic —— However, for many users, perhaps more accustomed to Windows XP, and some applications that are used daily may not work properly in Windows Vista, so many people want to install Windows XP in the system, of course, the premise It does not affect Windows Vista pre-installed in the system, after all, it is expensive to buy.
There is a large proportion of the comments on the Vista World website and the e-mails received. Many users want to know how to install Windows XP on a PC with Windows Vista pre-installed, and set up dual boot separately. Different systems, given our limited energy, cannot be answered one by one. Therefore, a brief summary of this, introduce the basic idea of installing Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC, I hope to help friends.
Warning: Don't install Windows XP directly on a PC with Windows Vista pre-installed. It is well known that Microsoft has adopted a new system boot management mechanism and a new BootLoader in Windows Vista. It is different from Windows NT since Windows NT. Ntldr is used in XP/2003, so installing Windows XP directly on a PC with Windows Vista pre-installed will destroy the Windows Vista Boot Loader, as we said in the Windows Vista installation tutorial:
If you want to be on a PC In the case of using multiple operating systems at the same time, you must ensure that Windows Vista is the last installed system. Otherwise, if you install Windows XP after installing Windows Vista, Windows Vista boot loader will be overwritten by ntldr+boot.ini, resulting in Windows Vista does not start.
I hope to keep this in mind.
How to install Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC
The following describes the steps to install Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC:
1, if your PC hard drive has been split at the factory Partitions, you can jump directly to "Install Windows XP";
2, prepare a separate installation partition for Windows XP
In many factory settings of the PC, the hard disk is not partitioned, that is, the system only contains “c : & rdquo; disk, especially on most laptops is extremely common. In this case, you need to split the hard disk first and prepare a separate partition for Windows XP.
a, open the disk manager, right click on the "C:" disk, select “ compressed volume in the pop-up menu, reduce the partition occupied by Windows Vista, and adjust the space for the new partition. Note: You need to reserve enough free space for the Windows Vista partition;
b, right click on the adjusted "unallocated disk space" and select "New Volume" to create Windows XP. New partition;
c, recommendation: It is best to re-adjust the system drive letter. For systems with only one partition, the hard disk is often used as “c:” and the DVD is “d:” The setting of the disk, in this way, the newly created hard disk partition drive letter is arranged in the order of "e:" disk, in some cases there may be some hidden danger. Therefore, it is recommended to re-adjust the drive letter at this time, such as setting the hard disk partition to “c:”“d:”, and adjusting the DVD drive letter to “e:”. Although this step is not necessary.