You can get a free version of VistaBootPro HERE
Daz
I got it installed did the f12 ran at statup… bios conflict I have to work out now. The drive is basically saying where the heck am I ?? Momma!!! where’s my Dell motherboard?
I’ll check out the vistaBoot link
OK, are both drives, (your main system drive, and the newly installed XP one) IDE or SATA?
both sata - VBP installed - have not read up on it yet to work with other drive though.
OK, so in theory, you should be able to see both drives if you boot into Vista from your main Vista one. If you can do that, then using VBP should be a doddle.
Thanks Daz - I’ll get it if it’s gettable. 
thanks for the help buddy!
hmmm… any ideas on best way to get the new installed drive to recognize it’s new environment?
I’m assuming here that you can boot into Vista succcesfully. If you can’t see the new drive in the My Computer part of Vista, it could be that it has tried to assign it a drive letter that’s already in use, by a dvd or cd drive for example. To see if this is the case, right click on the “computer” icon on the desktop, or hit the start button, and right click on “computer”, and select “Manage.” Select the “Disk Manageent” icon under “Storage” and see if he new drive is listed there. If you can see it there but not when you click the My Computer icon, then it’s probably been given the same drive letter as an existing drive. Right click on the new drive in the window on the right, and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths.” Just give it a new drive letter that you know isn’t in use. I tend to use Z and work backwards. Hopefully, you’ll now be able to see the drive in My Computer.
Hope that helps. Let me know how you get on!
Daz
Thanx Daz - when I get back on that sys I’ll go through and assign it - that may be the start to the fix. Right now my only 2 start up options are the vista op sys and the recovery partition of the same drive.
Thanks!
Edit: The drive is ‘seen’ by both Vista and Vista boot Pro - I can start it with f12 key at bios - it just freaks and bluescreens though - can’t do a screen shot but here’s a pic:
When I go into safe mode using F8 at start it asked to be registered. Going directly into XP it does not recognize any hardware at all.
Hey… that looks familiar… wait, I know…
Did you Google the STOP code? It appears you have a hardware or driver snafu Poppa…
D
I got into the drive in safe mode - disabled all the old hardware it was looking for and still got screened.
I’ll google it though.
I think this was a bad idea to even try - NO WAY I’m gonna get into this hornets nest. XP ain’t worth it. I will however download windows 7 for it.
Quote:
I will however download windows 7 for it.
Initial reports from the 'R' forum are pretty positive for Win 7. It may be worth a shot... I'll wait for the day I need/can upgrade the old Athlon system. That old dog has been good to me. If I don't gut it and re-use the case, I'll probably keep it alive and use it for a ReaMote box until I just can't keep it kickin' no mo...
Let us know about Win 7 PW.
D
dang - they pulled the beta of windows 7…
Kind’a late to this party but…
If I understand you correctly, you are trying to use a SATA drive with XP on it from a different computer - that’s going to give you all kinds of problems. The drivers won’t be correct for the system the OS finds itself in, etc.
If you take out your existing SATA drive (the one with VISTA installed on it) then replace it with the new SATA drive and install XP on it you can then re-install your VISTA drive and use the Boot Menu to chose between the drives at boot-up (the only caveat is your system will always report the drive with the current operating system as “C”) that will work and it’s how I have my rig set up.
Quote: (Poppa Willis @ Mar. 09 2009, 4:16 PM)
dang - they pulled the beta of windows 7.....
Meh... from what I hear it was time limited to like 30 days or something. Enough to let you get used to "the future" and then POOF! back to reality...
D