Will I lose my Vista boot screen with XP installation

[vmagics]

I am dual booting with WinXP and Vista Ultimate. XP was installed first and since the second OS installed was Vista I get the Vista boot screen on startup. I am considering formatting and reinstalling XP but I'm a little concerned about losing the Vista boot screen or worse, losing the option of booting into Vista altogether. The only recommendation I've received (I read it in a dual booting tutorial) is EasyBCD. Can any confirm whether or not this app works as promised and is it really necessary for such a small undertaking? I'm fairly well equipped to take on this task and this is my only concern... although I seem to remember the old boot.ini system not needing any third party software. Thanks

 

[Christopher Aponte]

I think you can reinstall XP with no problem, if XP and Vista are in different partition, then the pc will see both OS and let you have a choice menu to which to boot up.

any other opinion?

 

[Peter]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

Here you find some very usefull info on a dualboot with Vista or Win7 first. Vista and Win7 don't see XP if you instal Vista or Win 7 first.

 

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

Always setup the oldest OS first, thats my rule, and I never had problems. So I actually never tried the opposite. Vista and XP have a total different bootloader, so only try it out after a good backup. Actually I will not advise you to do this.

 

[Peter]

Always setup the oldest OS first, thats my rule, and I never had problems. So I actually never tried the opposite. Vista and XP have a total different bootloader, so only try it out after a good backup. Actually I will not advise you to do this.

If you try it you will see that there is absolute no risk if you follow the link, and its very easy.

 

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

It's a good guide, but I should only use it if no other options are available, and make a backup from your data on a usb disk.

 

[Peter]

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=11

Here is another great tip, if you install Ireboot in both XP and Win7 you can choose witch OS starts if you restart the PC.