XP/Vista Dual boot issue

[SamiAm]

I have a Dell Dimension 9100, with 2 HDs. I want to be able to access both XP or Vista upon booting the PC. A few things have happened to me in my trials thus far. I was told to boot from XP as the System orC/ drive, then copy the Boot folder and the bootmgr from Vista (D/) into XP's ND (C/) When I did this the computer booted directly to Vista, bypassing XP and swapped the drive letters (even though their cables should have them as XP System and vista SATA-2. In order to get back to booting from XP, I had to move the Boot folder and the bootmgr file to another folder...I chose (randomly) my Epson folder. I also notice now that I have no boot.ini file on my XP HD.

How should I proceed from here? How can I remedy the situation with the extra boot folder in the Epson folder?

In my BIOS the boot sequence is CD-ROM, SATA HD, IDE HD (not enabled), USB

I am a bit confused as BIOS does not differentiate between the 2 HDs, but just lists SATA.

Under SATA Operations I am operating under

Option #2 RAID auto detect/ATA

which Dell tells me is OK for if my HDs are not RAID (but I don't know how to check that)

Please tell me how to proceed with

a) checking to make sure I am not using RAID

B) getting a new boot.ini file

c) getting rid of the surplus boot folder in my Epson folder

d) finally getting XP and Vista to cohabitate peacefully on my PC

thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

-Sam

[ripken204]

well what boot screen shows up? im guessing the xp screen. and which OS did you install first, im guessing vista..

to make this work correctl, you need to install xp first, then vista. i tried doing it the other way around and had nothing but errors, even though i did get it to work.

[SamiAm]

Yes, the XP boot screen shows up.

Here is what I did,

bought a new HD, Ghosted my XP system and files to it, formatted the old HD, connected XP to C and the formatted HD to D, installed VISTA on D, but it just boots into XP with no access to Vista.

My conundrum is how to protect my files on C while getting XP and Vista to play nicely together.

repair install of XP or clean install of XP?

[ripken204]

well you shouldnt have to do anything with xp... so your telling me you installed vista and the boot screen for it didnt come up?

[SamiAm]

right, it boots into XP

[pmshah]

Your best bet is third party boot manager like BootItNG from terabyteunlimited. Your problems will be solved for ever.

[andrew_aj1]

What I have done before is have XP installed. Install a second hard disk, then just install vista to that second hard disk. Without doing anything else I am offered a selection to boot to Microsoft Windows or An earlyer version of Windows every time i turn on my comptuer.