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Hello Iv just moved house and my xp laptop has broken in the flit. Iv a vista desktop i was wanting to dual boot with xp I also have a win 7 laptop which is my baby so i dont want to play too much with it. I need to set up xp for some programs i have that only work on xp. I create a partition and then i go to install xp to that partition. (done it many times) but once the files have copied the system as normal restarts. The only problem is at this stage it does not restart it just crashes. I assume its confused on which boot loader to use. Is there any way of over coming this so i can complete the xp installation. Hope that makes sense.

Yes, the Vista boot loader will have been overwritten by the XP one. If you can boot into XP, download EasyBCD from here http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 Then reinstate the Vista boot loader by following these instructions http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vist ... htm?page=4 If neither Vista nor XP will boot you can boot from the Vista DVD choose "Repair your computer", next choose "Startup Repair" Type "BootRec.exe" and press Enter. Vista should now boot. If you want to start from scratch take a look at these step by step instructions http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vist ... htm?page=1

General rule of thumb when installing operating systems, is older versions of windows first, followed by newer ones. If you are installing Linux (Ubuntu etc) put that on last. And of course you need a partition for each OS. Do it that way and it is quite painless. If you have stuff you dont want to lose however and you dont want to do clean installs, then the previous post explains it well.

Thanks ever so much Rich, iv just nailed it. It was the bdc step i was missing out on. That has saved me alot of greif for all my data ect that is xp only. I owe you a favour there.
Tooltrade. I was considering that option of just a fresh boot of both systems xp first. Its amazing how easy it is once you have done it once.
That saves me buying a new lapyop cheers fellas.

Glad you've got it working. For the benefit of anybody else who needs to boot from the Vista DVD in order to fix startup problems I've realised that my original steps weren't complete, so here are the updated instructions:

Boot from the Vista DVD, click Next on the Regional Settings screen, then "Repair your computer" on the next screen. Vista will search for operating systems, select "Microsoft Windows Vista" and click "Next". Click "Startup Repair" for Vista to attempt to automatically fix any problems that are preventing Windows from starting. Information on Startup Repair can be found here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... -questions

If you need to run Bootrec.exe this can be run by clicking on the "Command Prompt" option. Info on this tool is here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392