Install XP after Vista - more than you bargan for

In my desire to go back to XP I thought I'd simply dual boot them (well triple boot counting Ubuntu). After all, drive space is plentiful and then I can migrate my data back slowly and still boot into Vista occasionally for nostalgia.

Well, had I done the research I'm sure I'd have found that it's not as easy as multi booting other OSs. Seems Vista isn't compatible with XPs boot loader that gets written to the MBR during setup. So when it comes time to reboot after the inital portion of the install I get a black screen with some lovely hieroglyphs. Oh oh. Booting from the XP install CD gives me the same. I quickly throw in my Vasta DVD thinking I'll repair the boot loader, and instead of it booting from the DVD, it seems to try and boot from a combo of the DVD and hard drive - not too sure what is happening here. The DVD goes for a bit, then the drive, then the DVD and so on until I get a bluescreen IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

So now I see no way to boot my system at all. (sweating a little). In the end I try booting Vista from DVD into safe mode and finally get to the repair screen and I'm back in business. I should also add that it too 4 boots into safe mode before I got the repair options. Each boot would have various levels of 'success'.

What started out as a routine procedure end in adventure. I guess that's the nature of adventures though.

I found this site to be a good resource during the problem:
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp