Dual boot XP and Vista

**glenglenn** · May 20th, 2008, 04:13 PM

Hi Guys,

I finally broke down and bought a copy of Vista Home Premium to install on my bench computer for research purposes and for helping customers navigate the OS.

I have already partitioned the hard drive and have XP Professional (an actual legal copy! -unusual these days with Pro) installed on the first partition with just enough (20GB) unallocated to host Vista.

Previously, I have always dual-booted drives by partitioning and formatting a portion of the drive and installing the oldest OS first on that and then installing the 2nd newer OS from the context of the running old OS onto the unallocated space remaining on the drive. Installing the newer OS in this way has always then created a modified boot.ini file that lists both operating systems with an adjustable timeout for OS selection. However, with Vista, I don't take anything for granted as it seems that all bets are off when comparing to previous scenarios with all OS's leading up to Vista.

Anybody have straightforward installations here without any elegant partition managers and boot loaders?

Also, I would like to image the entire drive when I am done, and from a parallel thread, it sounds like Acronis may be a good way to go. Anybody know any issues with imaging an entire disk that has both of these OS's in dual boot?

Thanks

**CCT** · May 20th, 2008, 04:15 PM

http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dua...stepbystep.htm

**Ferrit** · May 20th, 2008, 06:59 PM

With the price of harddrives these days so low,the easiest and safest method is 2 seperate harddrives.Then choose the boot drive by using F8 or F10 key at the post for the boot device.
Boot managers and all that stuff have a nasty habit of coming unglued and rendering both os's un useable

**wizzbagg** · May 21st, 2008, 10:42 AM

GlennGlenn,

Here is a bit of information that you might want to have at your fingertips.

I chose the same concept. I put Vista on a discrete drive and set up a dual boot system, so that I could go to either OS whenever I wanted to. Vista, no matter what you do, unless it is to physically remove your other boot drive..say it is C: and you are putting Vista on D: which is a totally separate drive, not a separate partition on the drive will alter C: drive and change the file system that you have in place.

I would HIGHLY recommend physically pulling your XP drive out of the PC when you set up/install Vista. That is the only way that your original OS will not become victimized by that evil beast that goes by the name of Vista. Moreover, you won't have to boot into Vista to edit the bootsector

using the Vista utility called bcdedit.exe

I would hate to see you fall into the same trap that I did, that being when I decided to uninstall Vista off the discrete drive, that it totally hosed my XP installation.

Good luck.

Dabiggdogg aka Phil

**Ferrit** · May 21st, 2008, 11:03 AM

As I said, completely seperate harddrives and of course you would disconnect the cable to the xp drive.
You definetly do not have to physically remove the harddrive from the computer.
Trust me it wont jump onto the disconnected drive by osmosis.

**Guts3d** · May 21st, 2008, 11:08 AM

I have already partitioned the hard drive and have XP Professional (an actual legal copy! -unusual these days with Pro) installed on the first partition with just enough (20GB) unallocated to host Vista.

Why is it unusual these days to have an actual legal copy of XP Pro? I can't tell you how many copies of both XP Pro and Home I have bought over the past few years. If you mean it is getting harder to find copies for sale, I can point you to lots of vendors.

**glenglenn** · May 21st, 2008, 02:34 PM

Thanks for the tips, guys! Boy, Vista is a piece of work. I really think in many ways Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with it. Bill only came back from retirement and their charity foundation to roll out the new OS. Personally, I wouldn't have associated my name with it. I've got mixed feelings about him anyway. H-1B Visas taking away domestic jobs and all (speaking from a US perspective). He once said "Good men create, but great men copy" (ala dropping into a computer shop in Seattle, grabbing up an operating system, tweaking it, and off he went to make his billions). Anyway, Vista must have Steve Jobs in seventh heaven.

I was also thinking of going the seperate physical drive route, so as not to endanger my good install of XP Professional. Thanks for the tip on selecting between them.

Also, in response to that last question, the reason I said what I did about legal copies of XP Pro is that in all cases where a customer has brought in a computer with a pirated copy of XP, 99%, no, 100% of the time, it's been Pro that they have pirated, not Home. They definately do not appreciate it when I inform them that I won't be a party to this. I've had guys stomping out of my shop in anger when I suggested they go legit and not propagate the OS in this manner, after all, this is how I make my living, but oh well...

**Guts3d** · May 21st, 2008, 06:07 PM

Thanks for the clarification. I know what you mean, when I sell a computer to someone they inevitably ask "Do I really need to pay for Office or XP?".

**Ferrit** · May 22nd, 2008, 01:19 AM

I surely do keep hearing all this "Oh Vista is bad" and "Oh Vista is the worst"
Yet to this day I have yet to see anything but smoke and not real concrete facts about why its bad.
Oh and by the way, running Vista 64 bit Ultimate for a year and a half. All drivers from day 1 except moden (dont have a use for it anymore) and webcam which was only a short time later that I ditched the mustek and got a decent logitech which had vista 64 bit drivers.
So all in all Vista didnt defrost my fridge,cause my dog to get hives, or contribute to global warming

**slgrieb** · May 22nd, 2008, 08:17 PM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

I surely do keep hearing all this "Oh Vista is bad" and "Oh Vista is the worst"
Yet to this day I have yet to see anything but smoke and not real concrete facts about why its bad.
Oh and by the way, running Vista 64 bit Ultimate for a year and a half. All drivers from day 1 except moden (dont have a use for it anymore) and webcam which was only a short time later that I ditched the mustek and got a decent logitech which had vista 64 bit drivers.
So all in all Vista didnt defrost my fridge,cause my dog to get hives, or contribute to global warming

And, despite PC Tools' ridiculous contention the Vista is less secure than W2K, I really don't see as many infected Vista machines as XP computers. Naturally, the ones I come across are generally infected with owner-installed "free" crap. Starware, Smitfraud, etc.