How to dual boot OEM Windows 7 (Dell) and Vista

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Comments: 3

Hi

I have Disk Director 11.

I have a new Dell XPS laptop that has Windows 7 preinstalled on it. In addition to the C drive there is a small 'System Reserved' partition that - I assume - contains the boot files. I wiped the disk and reinstalled Windows (it recreated the reserved partition), then resized the windows partition and created three more partitions - one for a dual boot Vista, one for a triple boot XP (if I can ever get the SATA drivers working) and one for my personal files.

Now I want to install Vista on my 3rd partition and use OS selector to choose which OS to boot into - but how do I do this? I've followed the instructions that I found elsewhere on this forum, but I end up with a Vista boot menu that shows Vista and Win 7.

What do I do about the 'system reserved' partition? Which partition do I set active when I install Vista - should I hide both the Win 7 and the reserved partition? Is there any way to get rid of the reserved partition altogether? I tried doing what I thought was right but I always end up with just a flashing cursor if I try to do anything that bypasses the reserved partition.

Hope you can understand my rambling!

Cheers

Jerry

Tue, 02/22/2011 - 15:50
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The Windows 7 boot files can be moved to the Windows 7 partition (here is an example). You can avoid having this partition created by creating the Windows 7 partition before installing Windows. For example, use DD to create the Windows 7 partition, then boot the Windows 7 DVD and select to install, select the partition and format it (recommended), then install.

It's recommended to create a small partition just for OSS. Do a Custom install and select the OSS partition as the installation destination. This keeps the main OSS files off of the Windows partitions where they are more likely to get moved. The partition can be small (say 200MB) and can be Primary or Logical. Since you already have four partitions, if the last one (the one for 'personal files') isn't Logical you will need to convert it to Logical so you can create another partition.

When Vista is installed, make sure the Vista partition is Active and the Windows 7 partition is hidden. This will force Vista to put Vista's booting files on the Vista partition.

Tue, 02/22/2011 - 17:05
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Beginner
Posts: 2
Comments: 3

Hi - thanks for your reply.

The first part (moving the boot files to the Win 7 partition) works great - thanks. Unfortunately the second part is'nt so successful. Although I can set an empty primary partition active and boot with my Vista DVD, and go through the motions of installing Vista, when the install is finished and the machine reboots all I see is a flashing cursor.

What should I be doing with OS selector after I've moved the Win7 boot files? I've tried deactivating it and then using a DD boot disk to hide the Win7 partition and set the empty partition active, I've also tried keeping not deactivating OSS and setting the properties of the Vista DVD to unhide the empty partition and make it active. Neither works for me, I'm afraid I need a bit more hand holding :-)

If I start from a working installation of Win7 in a standalone partition, should I hide that partition and install Vista into another partition without activating OSS at all until afterwards?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Wed, 02/23/2011 - 14:32
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Are both Windows 7 and Vista currently detected by OSS? If so, can you attach the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (instructions can be found here).

Can you attached a screenshot of what DD shows for the drive?

When you installed Vista did you have the installer format the partition?

Wed, 02/23/2011 - 17:16