2 Hard Drives, 2 Operating Systems

Recently I purchased a new computer with Vista Home Premium x64 on it. After purchasing, installing, and running RegCure (which is apparently incompatible with 64-bit technology) and ruining that hard drive, I have decided (while it is in at Gateway for repairs) that I want to install a secondary hard drive with Windows XP on it, saving the original hard drive for when technology catches up a little bit.

When I install XP on the secondary drive, it will in no way at all be able to affect my hard drive that has Vista on it, right? I am curious because I've heard that, with two hard drives installed, you can essentially access files from the opposite hard drives, playing music and running programs from it and such, things that may very well affect the registry systems between operating systems.

 

Playing music, yes; running programs, no. Programs need to be installed under whichever OS you want to run them with. If you have programs you want to use with both OS, then you need to install the programs under each OS. This is necessary to get the registries for each OS properly updated for the installed programs.

Here's a reference on installing Win XP with Vista already installed: How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots. This reference discusses installing the two OS on different partitions of the same physical hard drive. With two hard drives, I believe the procedure would be similar; you'd just be selecting a separate physical hard drive for the second OS rather than a separate partition on a single hard drive. For some other refernces, look at a few here: installing win xp with vista

 

Thank you. I read this recently:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185

Will I face this problem if I install the OS on 2 completely seperate drives? Preserving my system restore points is very important to me.

 

I read that article and, as I understand it, a registy tweak can be used to prevent Win XP from removing Win Vista restore points. I can't add anything to that; I have not actually installed Win XP on a system where Win Vista was already installed. So, I don't want to try to advise you further on this.

Other members will probably comment, just be patient.