I'm stumped. Need help.

Goal.

To create a dual boot hard drive with 2 partitions, one for XP pro, one for Vista Home Premium, on new 120 gig 2½" SATA hard drive. Seems easy enough, eh.

Main Problem.

Despite all I have read in various places, books, articles, advice, etc., it seems that a genuine MS Vista Home Premium Academic OS Upgrade DVD will NOT carry out a clean install. Looks like I purchased the wrong upgrade. 2 methods I have tried both result in MS error telling me "Naughty boy, you can't do this".

Some specs, and gory details.

First of all, I have 4 hard drives to play around with.

C: drive (currently installed in my Toshiba Tecra A7 laptop, with much tweaked XP Pro SP2 OS), nominal 60 gigs in size.(SATA). One partition.
N: drive (volume labelled after Nick, who gave me this drive). Nominal 40 gig 2½" IDE drive. Formatted to one partition, no data other than partitioning data, currently on USB.
V: drive for Vista, new 120 gig 2½" SATA hard drive, with tweaked Vista Home Premium OS on it, still with over 25 days left before validation required.
One partition only, on USB.
W: drive (Nominal 160 gig External 3½" hard drive, connected by USB. "W" for WOW, where I purchased it from. One partition, only.
I have genuine MS OS CD's /DVD, for Windows 2000 Pro, XP Pro (SP2) and Vista Home Premium Academic OS Upgrade DVD.

So far:-

I have done FULL backups of XP Pro (from C and Vista (from V to Folders on W: drive, using Acronis True Image (ATI) v10 with its' standard defaults.
Backups are 8 gigs in size for C: and 9 gigs for Vista (both approximate), and each backup has been validated.

Gotcha.

Main gotcha is, apparently, that ATI will only back up entire partitions, or Files and Folders provided that the target drive is equal to (or bigger?) in capacity than the source drive.If target drive (or partition?) is smaller than source partition ATI just does not give you that option. If I am wrong on this I would be certainly be very glad to be corrected.

Proposed course of action.

1. Partition "V" into 2 partitions (for XP and Vista) without losing Vista info, if this is possible. First partition would be for tweaked XP Pro, from current C: drive, and second partition for Vista Folder from "W" drive. Best way to do this?

2. Or wipe Vista info from "V" and start over. I'd rather not do this as I am not certain that restoring Vista Folder from "W" to "V" would work 100%, due to ATI apparent gotcha, and I have sunk a lot of time and effort tweaking Vista.

3. Or Partition "V" into 2 partitions (for XP and Vista) without losing Vista info, if this is possible. First partition would be for standard XP Pro,from XP CD (to become "C" drive, and second partition for Vista Folder from "W" drive, (to become"D" on this drive). Best way to do this?

Then restore XP pro backup from "W" Folder to overwrite bog standard XP Pro install. Would this work taking into account ATI "gotcha", and then carry out a "Repair" on Vista, hoping that it allow Vista to be repaired and B]NOT[/B] just overwrite bog standard (or tweaked XP Pro) XP install. I have my doubts that Vista repair would correct existing Vista. I think it will overwrite the XP partition. Any thoughts on this?

4. Or reformat "W" into 3 partitions. First partition to be the same size as proposed XP Partition on current "V" (to become "C" eventually).
Second partition on "W" to be the same size as the balance of capacity on "V". Third partition to be unused for this exercise.

What I have in mind is formatting both "W" and "V" to same sizes, for XP Pro
and Vista partitions. Say 20-30 gigs for XP Pro, and around 90 gigs (nominal) for Vista. Third partition (on "W"),would be for balance of capacity from 120 gigs to 160 gigs. Then maybe ATI would work, without the "gotcha"?

If you have read this so far, and understand what I am trying to get at, congratulations.

5. Forget it all, go out and buy a normal Vista Home Premium upgrade, at around AUD$179. :cry Back up XP Pro to new "C" partition. Clean install new Vista Home Premium upgrade onto new "D" partition.
Restore XP Pro backup from "W" to new "C" partition, and hope it works.
Restore Vista backup from "W" to new "D" partition, and hope it works.

Sorry this post is so long. If you have lost interest, or are confused after getting this far, I will understand. Hope someone has some better ideas than mine, (wouldn't be hard.). I don't mind using another backup program if ATI will not do what I am trying to achieve, but would prefer a Free one as I have sunk enough $$$ into this exercise already.

6. Forget all about XP Pro and just stick to Vista (but I like XP, and know it well and use it to help out others).

I've put this into the Software Forum as it is the software (ATI and Vista Home Premium Academic upgrade) that are giving me trouble.

Any comments, preferably constructive, welcome. Bazza

 

Re: I'm stumped. Need help. Dual boot XP/Vista.

Thanks for the series of PM's studiot, but I have already tried 2 variations of your suggestion previously and it doesn't work for Academic Upgrades, :cry

All suggestions much appreciated.

Bazza.

 

Disregard my previous comments about Academic upgrades.

I have just realised that the Upgrade path from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium is not a valid upgrade path.

You can upgrade from Xp Basic to Vista Home Premium, but not from XP Professional. For XP Pro, you can only go to Vista Business or Vista Ultimate.

I had known of this but in my haste to get a bargain price for a VIsta Home Premium upgrade, I had forgotten this minor detail. :cry

Back to the Upgrade drawing board. Bazza