Vista Tutorial - formatting the hard drive and reinstalling vista

HI, my computer was working well till recently. i was using vista home
premium [upgrade] and xp as dual booting. while trying to shrink the
partition, i ended up deleting 1 partition. since then my computer doesnt
boot. i tryed to reinstall xp, it asked for formatting the drive keeping all
files, and i did. but after installing all files, xp doesnt start up. it goes
back to the setup.
when i tried to repair this from vista cd, it repaired, but it can start
only from a previous version of windows. but i cant even boot the computer.
help me please..

is there any way i can formatt my hard drive completely [ including deleting
the partition] and reinstalling the xp and vista?

Hi, rpkbahamas.
Yes. Since this is your only hard drive, the process is fairly
straightforward. Just remember the Golden Rule of dual-booting: Install
the newest operating system last.

First, boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and run Setup to install WinXP, letting it
create and format just the single partition where you will have it install
WinXP. Among other things, Setup will write WinXP's startup files (NTLDR,
NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) to the first partition, making it the System
Partition for the computer. Then it will create the Boot Folder
(C:\Windows) for WinXP and write all the rest of WinXP's operating system
files there.

Then boot into WinXP and use Disk Management to create a second partition
and assign it a drive letter (I'll assume you call it D:.). Insert the
Vista DVD-ROM and, from within WinXP, run Vista's Setup.exe. This will add
Vista's BCD (Boot Configuration Data) to the System Partition (Drive C,
then create the Boot Folder (D:\Windows) for Vista and write the several GB
of Vista OS files there.

All done! ;<)

Naturally, you should backup your data before beginning this, especially any
photos, financial files, etc., that don't exist anywhere else in the world.
Don't bother to backup apps, but be sure you have media so that you can
reinstall the apps in WinXP and again in Vista.

(I prefer a more complex arrangement, with the first partition quite small
and serving as only the System Partition, with Vista in the second volume
and WinXP in the third, and the rest of the HD in a large volume for apps
and data only, accessible from both WinXP and Vista. But that is more
complicated to install than the simple 2-partition arrangement I've
described.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)

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