I have a HDD from another computer which had Windows XP installed on it. I removed that Hard Drive and now I have two Hard Drives connected to my main computer, drive C (which is the main Drive and has windows vista home premium installed on it) and drive D which has XP installed on it.

Is there any way in which I can boot Windows XP up from drive D on startup? Because at the moment, my computer will only let me boot with drive C with windows vista, I cannot figure out how to chose between Vista and XP or get some sort of screen up which says:

Select operating system:

Windows Vista Home Premium

Windows XP Professional ...

Help would be much appreciated, however if this won't work, what would be a good solution without having to buy a copy of windows XP, 7 or any other OS?

Regards,
Edward.

Btw I have tried opening WINNT32.dll in the D drive but it comes up with a 'file is correct/missing' error

If the XP installation was installed from a different computer, it will not boot up in your current computer. For XP to work on your main, it needs to be installed from there. I think it has to do with the way the drivers are loaded and installed during the installation process.

Let's say you did install Vista on C:\ and XP on D:\. You should receive a boot-up option on start up asking you which install to boot from. Alternatively, you can try using boot-managers, or try switching the boot-priority order in the BIOS to the HD you want to boot from.

Quote from eddy678 :

Is there any way in which I can boot Windows XP up from drive D on startup?

You can change the boot device order in BIOS. Vista should also be able to recognize XP on the other hard drive and offer you a boot menu, but the detection of other OSes is done during installation. It's probably possible to rerun the detection even from an already installed OS though.

Windows might have trouble booting if you move if from one computer to another because it remembers HW configuration of the computer it was installed on...

Quote from MadCatX :

You can change the boot device order in BIOS. Vista should also be able to recognize XP on the other hard drive and offer you a boot menu, but the detection of other OSes is done during installation. It's probably possible to rerun the detection even from an already installed OS though.

Windows might have trouble booting if you move if from one computer to another because it remembers HW configuration of the computer it was installed on...

Went into the BIOS and it only says 'SATA Hard Drive' not 'SATA Hard Drive- C (hdd number)' and 'SATA Hard Drive- D (hdd number)' In other words, it does recognise drive D but I cannot get it to show up in the boot sequence option in the BIOS. Only drive C shows up there, the other options are: PATA Hard Drive, USB/external device and Floppy drive.

Is there an option to change the priority for all SATA HD? I remember when I used to play around with my dinky EEE PC, it had the same thing. In the boot priority, it would be like - 1. HD, 2. LAN, 3. Floppy or something like that, so in some other place in the BIOS, there's a place to switch the HD Priority.

Quote from GenesisX :

Is there an option to change the priority for all SATA HD? I remember when I used to play around with my dinky EEE PC, it had the same thing. In the boot priority, it would be like - 1. HD, 2. LAN, 3. Floppy or something like that, so in some other place in the BIOS, there's a place to switch the HD Priority.

I honestly don't know, I've looked everywhere but can't find an option to select the D drive to boot instead of the C drive. If this is any help, I have BIOS version: Dell Inc 2.2.0 29/03/2007, had a look on google but can't find a 'howto' tutorial on how to do this .