Two vistas?

iviv · 30 Mar 2008 at 15:41

I'm preparing to format my XP hard drive to stick vista 64 on it, as I hear its better, and I'm planning on moving up to 4Gb of ram in the near future. The two things I'm really worried about are drivers, and if I can easily dual boot 2 versions of vista.

I've downloaded drivers for most of the things that I think will need them, and from what I've heard, windows update should pick up anything I've missed? And what about all this thing with unsigned drivers? Is that still a large problem, or have manufacturers been getting them signed by MS now?

Secondly, will one of the vista's sort out the whole dual boot thing? At the moment, it has Vista and 'older version of windows'. When I format the XP drive and put on the 64-bit vista (I'm currently running 32-bit), will it automatically rearrance the dual boot screen? And will it be easy to identify which is the 32-bit and 64-bit install?

Thanks

gareth170 · 30 Mar 2008 at 16:04

i have xp , vista32 , vista64 on different partitions and all 3 work separately. i personly don't let windows do the boot file. for me when i wanna go in vista 32 or xp i just make that partition active. that way if 1 wos falls i can still boot into the other 2.

iviv said:
I've downloaded drivers for most of the things that I think will need them, and from what I've heard, windows update should pick up anything I've missed? And what about all this thing with unsigned drivers? Is that still a large problem, or have manufacturers been getting them signed by MS now?

windows updates will pick up some drivers.. most drivers are signed now

Borden · 30 Mar 2008 at 16:15

What i did with mine (XP + Vista 64) was to install them both on different drives, without the other drive being plugged in, so that they were independant installations and none of the boot stuff was done automatically. Then i went into Vista and ran EasyBCD to manually add the XP drive to the boot selection screen.

EasyBCD also lets you change the name of the OS shown on the bootloader so you can easily identify between installations.

iviv · 30 Mar 2008 at 18:18

Thanks, it all sounds good so far.
One other thing I thought of, I'd like to make a backup of my XP drive, and my dad uses Acronis to backup his work PC, so would it be possible to use this and copy the XP partition, so that I can just go back to how things were if the 64-bit version isn't as good? Then EasyBCD would be able to sort out the XP drive and let me boot from it again?

Borden · 30 Mar 2008 at 22:16

iviv said:
Thanks, it all sounds good so far.
One other thing I thought of, I'd like to make a backup of my XP drive, and my dad uses Acronis to backup his work PC, so would it be possible to use this and copy the XP partition, so that I can just go back to how things were if the 64-bit version isn't as good? Then EasyBCD would be able to sort out the XP drive and let me boot from it again?

Yes, it should be as simple as copying the XP image back onto the drive and booting from it.

sneakypenguin · 31 Mar 2008 at 04:25

vista is much better for drivers now comapred to when it was first released and most modern drivers are signed, may have a problem find drivers for older hardware but nothing a google search won't solve

jeffa123 · 1 Apr 2008 at 06:00

Try Vista Boot I don't remember where I got it but I believe it was on this forum I was pointed to it. I have 2 versions of Vista Premium on one PC and use the boot program to setup the dual boot. Mine are on seperate Hard Disks as well.
I also have a version of Vista Ultimate on another HD but I have to use F8 to boot it because the boot menu was made to boot 2 of the same level of the software. I could most probably go in and change things but as I principly use Premium I have to strike a medium. If I decide I wish to install another O/S on another HD I just Pop in another HD and install it on that without having to interferrupt the origonal boot sequence already setup.