Dell 1420 Dual Boot Fiasco

Alright, I've had a few reads through this forum and I'm a pretty astute user, yet for the past two days since I received my 1420 I've had nothing but problems trying to get Vista Ultimate and XP working.

Now, before you ask, I've tried both in AHCI and ATA mode!

I've backed up everything with Ghost and wiped the entire disk clean. I've broken the drive into four partitions - a 60GB NTFS for XP, a 60GB NTFS for Vista, a ~27GB ext3 for Ubuntu, and the remaining 2GB for Linux Swap. I've put this on the backburner for now since I just want XP and Vista running first.

I've slipstreamed the Intel ACHI drivers into my XP install. XP sees the disc, everything installs fine, and I'm able to get that running just fine. All the drivers install with a little work, all is good.

Now I move on to Vista Ultimate. First I've tried the 32-bit version. Pop it in, let it go, it sees my drive fine. Gets to the point where the install first needs to reboot. It reboots as expected and...what the hell? It hangs there with a DOS cursor.

Alright, I figure I can at least boot into the XP recovery console and salvage that. A FIXBOOT later and XP is booting again. Then it blue screens. What the hell? The ACHI drivers are installed and I have not switched it from AHCI to SATA mode. What gives? XP can reboot all it wants before trying to install Vista without a single BSOD.

Wipe it again, start over. Install XP in ATA mode. Great, it works. Install Vista in ATA mode. Gets to the reboot process, hangs there AGAIN. What is going on here?

Try #3. This time I'm in AHCI again with Vista Ultimate x64. Same thing happens.

Try #4. ATA mode with Ultimate x64. Same as #1-3.

Other things I've tried:

• Installed Vista by itself, same issue. It just won't come back after reboot.
• Installed the AHCI driver during the 32-bit and 64-bit installs to make sure I had the latest driver. This produces no difference.

Needless to say I'm extremely frustrated with this entire thing. Anyone?

 

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

 

Finally got Vista x64 to install on its own last night with a single 149GB partition. Man, what a pain in the ass. I'm definitely doing a complete backup before I even attempt to get XP and Ubuntu going.