Restoring Vista Image without dualboot?

I had Vista installed on a single HDD with 3 partitions, it was the only OS, and then did an image with Acronis.

Later on, I re-installed winXP over the top, that is I formatted that partition and put xp on it, and left the other 2 partitions alone.

I now want to leave the xp on the first partition, and restore the vista image onto the second partition.

Because the vista image was backed up when it was the only OS installed, is there anything I have to edit on the the XP install and the restored Vista, so that it dual boots correctly, as I read that when vista is installed fresh with xp already on, it adds a boot manager and configures the xp install partition automatically?


Thanks.

 

What you want to do is certainly possible, although it will take some additional steps.

Restore your Vista image to the second partition, making sure you take the partition sizes into consideration. I have not used Acronis but it must provide facility to restore an image to a different sized partition.

Boot through the Vista installation disk and correct the MBR. The option is called something like "automatically repair windows installations". I am sure Vista disk will be able to make both XP and Vista bootable.

 

Hi, what exactly will I need to make sure I'm doing in regards to the partition size?

I don't want to change the partition size of the second partition, and Acronis usually just makes the OS image, whether xp or vista, fit the partition size. Is that what you mean, or do I need to actually make the size a specific number?


Also when you say to repair, is that like the xp repair option, in that it refreshes everything back to original, so I would need to do updates, drivers all over again, as I'm hoping to avoid that if possible.

Thanks again.

 

No, just restore it to the parition you want.

He is talking about startup repair. The Vista install disk will fix the MBR, but I doubt that you will be able to boot into XP after a vista startup repair. The problem is you want to be able to boot into either os. Just restoring vista will not accomplish that.

If what Raaza007 suggestion doesn't allow you to boot into either os, then you will need to change the boot loader. Install a 3rd party app such as EasyBCD, which will change the boot loader so that you will have the option at boot up to enter into either os.

 

1- As to the first, all I wanted to say was if your C: partition is a different size then the D:, then make sure you take that into account while restoring the image there. If Acronis automatically does it then you are good there.

2- The Vista installation disk will only fix the mbr to make the OS boot correctly. But after giving my previous suggestion some further thought I realized that it might not work (you can however try it, it might work). I read somewhere that in order to have Vista and XP work together on one computer, you need to hide one while using the other. So, when you boot into Vista you need to hide the XP partition and when you boot into XP you need to hide the Vista partition. You will probably need a third party boot manager. These are usually contained within partition managers like Paragon partition manager or Acronis disk director. They automatically handle the task of hiding one partition. I do not know of any freeware utility that can perform this same function or to make both bootable without needing a boot manager. Wait for someone else with more experience in this area.

 

Guide to dual-boot Vista with XP ( XP already installed ). The partitioning steps can be omitted, as long as as your target partition for Vista is large enough for the Acronis image. BTW, the free Partition Wizard bootable CD is fantastic for Windows partitioning.