Advice needed: Boot manager / loader for XP & Vista

z0mbi3 · 13 Nov 2006 at 14:48

In anticipation of the upcoming Vista release I'm planning on getting another HDD.

There's going to be a teething period so naturally I'd like to keep my XP installation available. So rather than start messing around with partitions, I'd like to add some kind of boot loader to the new Vista drive that will allow me to pick between the two.

It's been awhile since I did this. Previously I've used boot magic, lilo & grub. Don't get the wrong ideas though, my linux experience is minimal.

So can anyone make any recommendations?

bledd · 13 Nov 2006 at 15:23

bootvistapro

philhoole · 13 Nov 2006 at 15:28

I've used Bootit at work for several years and its the best boot manager I have used. It's not free though. $35. No Linux knowledge required.

You can get it from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

As with all these boot managers you can totally trash your disks if you are not careful !

z0mbi3 · 13 Nov 2006 at 21:57

Well my plan is to keep my xp drive as it is, and have the bootloader on the vista drive, set as the first bootable.

I've done this on linux setups in the past and its meant that if anything went wrong I could just unplug the linux drive and the xp one would become primary, with its original bootloader intact.

bledd · 13 Nov 2006 at 22:36

just unplug the xp drive when you install vista if you want to do it like that, thats what i do, then i use the bios to choose which one i boot from

z0mbi3 · 14 Nov 2006 at 08:23

Well what I'd really like is for the boot loader to just be on the vista drive , and that drive be the primary.

If I set the Vista drive to first bootable then install the loader will it be able to detect the xp install and add it to its boot list?