I followed the procedure using EasyBCD and everything went fine. After having worked a bit under XP, I rebooted. XP booted up to the display of the desktop (where I can see my icons) for 1-2 seconds and then immediately switched to the Vista boot. Just before the Vista boot, I could spot for a split second a small blue screen in the upper left corner similar to the BSOD. The xp repair-install did not solve anything. This is the umpteenth laptop I've installed with dual-boot (XP installed on pc with pre-installed Vista) and never ran into this. I would like to avoid reinstalling xp completely.

Which is it, XP-Vista dual boot or Vista-XP dual boot? There's a difference.

Did you installed XP after Vista like you did with your HP nc6320 laptop (successful) and Dell Inspiron 6400 (unsuccessful) HERE? i_Xp/VistaUser

I installed XP after Vista, as usual, I might say. The Dell you mention (you're very well organized) was probably my second attempt. I've improved a bit since then, except this time... Anyhow, I managed to solve the problem. I booted into xp Safe Mode successfully, did nothing there but reboot normally. That's it. BTW, with the tattoo process that is being implemented illegally by some assemblers (HP, Compaq, Packard Bell, Acer), Toshiba and Lenovo are among the honest assemblers who don't tatto their notebooks. They also provide XP and windows 2000 drivers. Thank you for your cooperation.

Consider a virtual machine. It may be all you need. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

"...with the tattoo process that is being implemented illegally by some assemblers (HP, Compaq, Packard Bell, Acer), Toshiba and Lenovo are among the honest assemblers who don't tatto their notebooks..." ermmm.. Please to elaborate on this bit??? Familiar with tatooing as a body-art form (not that I have any); and also in the military sense... but here???

Sorry for the delay in replying as I was not advised of your message. Tattooing is the latest (illegal) trick that Microsoft have devised with some of their partners. The assemblers have an identifier both in the BIOS and in the boot record. Whenever you add any OS to the original installation, the boot record is changed (and the identifier by the same token). Your machine will freeze at boot as the BIOS finds no identical identifier in the boot record. There are ways around this of course through the Install DVD's or by a process you can run immediately on your new laptop before adding anything to it.