How to boot to C image on external hard drive.

I upgraded to Windows Vista on my C drive, dont like it and want to go back to XP. I have 2 recent images of my C drive with XP on an external drive. My one attempt to get an image of the C drive with Vista did not run.

I made a boot cd for XP with ATI 10. What is my safest way back to XP.? I do not want Vista on the C drive. Can I boot directly to the external drive by changing the priority in the Bios? or do I have to use the boot CD and tell it which image to look at on the external drive.?

I did use ATI to verify my latest C image with XP.

Any advice on how to safely return to XP would be greatly appreciated.

Derek

 

No surprise there.

You'll need to boot from the ATI10 Recovery CD and restore the XP image to your C drive. You'll need to restore the MBR as well.

You can't boot a drive that just has an image. To be clear, if your external drive has tib images on it, you can't boot from that. It is possible to boot XP from an external USB drive (very complicated), but not in your case with what you have. It has to be done in certain way in advance.

 

Mustang,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Could you please elaborate on what I need to do to accomplish " You'll need to boot from the ATI10 Recovery CD and restore the XP image to your C drive. You'll need to restore the MBR as well"

I appreciate your help.

Derek

 

Put the Recovery CD in the drive and start your computer. Watch for a message to press a key such as F12 to boot from specific devices and select the CD drive. If you don't see that, and if the CD doesn't boot the computer into TrueImage, you will need to go into the BIOS Setup and set the CD as the first boot device.

After you boot into TrueImage, select Restore. Follow the prompts and locate your backup image on the external hard drive. Select the C partition and the MBR to restore. Restore that image to the C partition and make it Active.

Remove the CD when the restore is complete and reboot the machine. You will be back in Windows XP.

I strongly suggest that you make an image of your Windows Vista installation just in case you decide that you want to use Vista in the future. If you make the image now, you won't have to completely reinstall Vista again if you have a use for it.

 

jmk94903,

Thanks for your help. The restoration worked perfectly. I am glad to be back on Windows XP. I am sure glad that I purchased and used ATI 10.

Derek

 

Wonderful news!

Now that you know that you can always return safely to Win XP, you can experiment further with Vista.

Vista has many interesting features, and it is the operating system of the future, so it's good to be able to test it as long as you have a safe recovery until is works properly for you.