How to Make a Dual Boot With Vista & XP Using Free Partitioning Software

Video Transcript

"Partitioning with free software is very similar to partitioning with Windows. But the difference will be is that you're going to be using this free software from the Internet that boots to its own operating system outside of Windows to partition free space to allow Windows XP to be installed along side Vista. Once, Vista... or once that free space is installed and a partition is made, then XP... you can put the XP CD in. Partition Logic... it's free and basically you'll put it on to a CD or a USB key drive and you'll go in through the menus and basically you'll see this. It's a graphical representation of your hard drive. You have to be very very careful and I do not recommend dual booting for novice users by the way because it does involve messing with your already primary partition which Vista is currently installed... or XP is currently installed onto. So you may be messing with the operating system that you use everyday. So, here's a graphical representation. Right here, the yellow portion is basically showing the active partition and then this purple portion is showing free space. It would right click on the purple portion, say format. It'll format as a partition, say the D drive. Windows will recognize it as the D drive. And then once it recognizes it, you can then put in the XP CD, restart the computer, boot from the XP CD, run through the whole XP setup process and after you've restart, you'll see an option to boot to Vista or to boot to XP in a DOS black and white lettering format."