Dell OEM Vista + OEM XP Dual-Boot?

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop that I am planning on attempting to dual-boot fairly soon.

I have never attempted to tweak my computers in any way before, so I’m in rather inexperienced territory here. Before I seriously attempt to do this and quite possibly end up way over my head, I was wanting to know if this was even possible to do using an OEM XP SP1 disk in conjunction with OEM Vista? XP OS disk is from the same manufacturer, both systems have the same chipset and graphics controller manufacturer (Intel), and also have much of the same class of BIOS version (Desktop: A03 - Laptop: A16) as well – so there shouldn’t be any conflicting issues there, right?

Also, I’d like to know if anyone thought I might run into potential problems if I’m prompted to use the XP activation key. I don’t want to lose my license for the desktop it actually came with as it is still in use. Would there be no problems arising from that because it’s being installed again on a Dell?

I also do not want to loose my system’s recovery partition that would allow me to Factory Restore, as my Vista disk does not allow the repair install option. Is there any way at all that I can keep from losing that from doing this?

Lastly, I’m intending to follow this method here for this. Does anyone spot any potential problems with following that method in my particular case? Or does anyone know of a better method that I can follow with more specifics on the whole OEM thing?


Any and all help, opinions or suggestions on these matters is greatly appreciated!

I realize this is an old post but answering anyway

the simple answer is no

I have one so I know

the 1525 uses two different bios settings one for vista and one for XP

if you attempt to use the procedure you picked out

it will load xp but when you reboot you will get two corrupted OS's

What I did was bought a sata drive and a carrier for the computer and just swap drives (remembering to reset the bios each time

Sorry but Dell is very adamant about not being able to dual boot for some reason on this machine

its a Pain but it works