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Dual Booting with Vista, making the hard way simple
I've always found that Microsoft has a frustrating attitude when it comes to the existence of other operating systems. Despite being at real pains to explain to me the 'Get the facts' campaign (describing the benefits of Windows over Linux) is just about people being able to make an informed decision, they don't make it easy to run more than one operating system on a computer.
Maddeningly this was even true yesterday, when I attempted to install Windows XP on a computer with Vista installed. Without wishing to spoil the story, it was only made possible by installing some software called EasyBCD.
Yes, I know I took XP off myself five months ago, and yes, it was a silly thing to have done but I'd be in the wrong job if I didn't get excited about new technology.
Still, I thought that as with previous versions of Windows, if I 'repaired' the computer with the newer version of Windows a boot menu would be created as Windows XP does with Me or 2000. How wrong can one be...
As expected Windows XP couldn't recognise Windows Vista. The problem came when I used the Vista disc to repair the computer. As mentioned above, previous versions of Windows created a menu but not Vista. It simply set the computer to boot into Vista again.
Thankfully I found a solution in the form of EasyBCD. This clever program allows you to edit the boot menu of Windows Vista to add other operating systems, be it a previous version of Windows or even Linux. It was very simple to use and worked first time.
Hopefully I will learn to be less headstrong in the future.
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