Excellent article and something to be aware of for new builds that don't want bloatware but only XP!
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...-fun-for-xp-users.ars?comments=1#comments-bar
From the comments section of the article:
Windows XP works just fine with properly aligned partitioned drives. The only part it fails with them is with the initial "blue screen" install process as that is hard-coded for the 63rd 512byte offset. But you can get around it. I know this because when I worked at HP we had this issue. Microsoft's solution was some registry tricks in WinPE to format the drive the "XP" way, but we found ways around it while maintaining the proper alignment.
The trick we used was:
1) Install XP first
2) ImageX XP to another HDD or over the network
3) Reformat the drive and install Vista
4) Copy XP to the hard disk
5) Setup bcdedit to dualboot XP
And for just XP we would skip the Vista install but use the new Vista bootloader as opposed to ntldr. It worked just fine, and we got the "faster" properly aligned partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923332
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...-fun-for-xp-users.ars?comments=1#comments-bar
From the comments section of the article:
Windows XP works just fine with properly aligned partitioned drives. The only part it fails with them is with the initial "blue screen" install process as that is hard-coded for the 63rd 512byte offset. But you can get around it. I know this because when I worked at HP we had this issue. Microsoft's solution was some registry tricks in WinPE to format the drive the "XP" way, but we found ways around it while maintaining the proper alignment.
The trick we used was:
1) Install XP first
2) ImageX XP to another HDD or over the network
3) Reformat the drive and install Vista
4) Copy XP to the hard disk
5) Setup bcdedit to dualboot XP
And for just XP we would skip the Vista install but use the new Vista bootloader as opposed to ntldr. It worked just fine, and we got the "faster" properly aligned partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923332
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760
