Dual boot question

I have Win XP SP3 and I'd like to install Vista as well. I've partitioned the HDD in order to run games from (partition) E:. Reading other information, it's recommended to partition C: in order to resize it to install Vista. Is it a matter of making room for Vista or is it necessary to put Vista in another partition for it to work?

Presently, I have 82 gigs of free space on C:.

 

Strictly speaking it would be best to create a new primary partition for Vista only. However, it would also be possible to run Vista within the XP partition by installing it within a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or VMWare.

I have previously run 98SE within XP using VirtualBox.

Good Luck

 

I decided to put vista in another partition [F:], now if you can tell me, is there a drawback to dual boot? If it's more trouble than it's worth I'll dump xp and go with Vista 64.

BTW I'm asking because no later than tomorrow I intend on purchasing Vista 64 and four more gigs (totaling eight) of ocz memory.

 

The answer with reservations would be no, it's not more trouble to dual boot.

However, there are certain instances when it might be. Example you buy say a new graphics card and now you would have to uninstall old drivers and reinstall new drivers on 2 o/s.

I dual boot virtually all my pcs with combinations of 98SE, 2000, XP, XP Pro and Linux. So far there is no need to look at Vista and with any luck I will move over to Linux before that is a requirement.

Good Luck

 

If I may, one other question, will the status change automatically to system and the pri/log to primary once I load Vista on the F: partition?

 

Not sure I understand what you mean.

In order to dual boot you will need to partition you drive into at least 2 primary partitions. Install the earliest o/s first ie xp, then Vista.

Now the windows bootloader will detect another o/s once you install Vista and you will have the option at boot to choose which partition to boot into. I use PM BootMagic as my bootloader [and Grub with Linux] and have disabled the windows one but there others to choose from.

When the required o/s boots, the partition is then set as active and visible and any other partition containing an o/s will be set as hidden. Active meaning that it is the boot partition. Do not get bogged down with drive lettering by that I mean that on a dual boot system XP/Vista if you boot to XP, this partition by default will be labelled C:\ and similarly when you boot Vista that same drive letter will apply.

If you go into Disk Management you will be able to see all the partitions be they visible of hidden.

If you have never done this before, back up all your valuable data and also image the XP partition so that way there will be no harm done [for the games partition with software installation, image that one too]. Don't rely on System Restore as this is next to useless.

Good Luck

 

There are essentially two different ways of dual booting - Microsoft's way and everybody else's way. risk_reversal describes 'everybody else's' way, where other operating systems are hidden from the active one. However, unless you install a boot manager, if you simply install Vista to your new partition it will be done Microsoft's way and both systems will be visible. The active system will be C:, and the other D:

Both methods work, and both have their advocates, but I would always recommend 'everybody else's' way, simply because under the Microsoft method, if XP fails to boot there is a distinct possibility Vista will too. When using isolated installs with a boot manager this cross contamination will not happen and the other OS will boot.

My own favorite boot manager is Grub4DOS, which allows you to install any OS to any partition, primary or logical, and is easy to configure and very robust.

 

I thank you and risk_reversal for taking time to assist. I've downloaded both grub files because I was not sure what differentiated one from the other (a) grub4dos.zip or (b) grub4dos.src.zip.

 

Unless you want the source code too it's just grub4dos.zip

I think you will find this guide makes installing Grub4DOS on a flash or hard drive very easy -

http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php