Duel boot vista/XP

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 00:27

Hi, I’ve heard a lot about duel booting XP/Vista from a partitioned hard drive. However I’m purchasing a new WD 340gb HD to install vista on. XP with remain on my old hard drive. Do I just set boot priority in BIOS to either HD to boot xp or Vista each time?

Gornall · 25 Jan 2007 at 00:52

Yes should be fine.

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 09:10

thanks. For some reason i didnt think it would be this easy.

TC1 · 25 Jan 2007 at 09:21

Why not split up the new hard drive and put Vista on one partition and XP on the other? This doesnt appeal to you?

$anch3z · 25 Jan 2007 at 09:56

Dual boot should be a doddle really for both these OS's, after all vista is just xp with some nice effects and a friendly user interface

TC1 · 25 Jan 2007 at 10:00

Is it possible to Dual boot with Vista on one drive and XP on the other without having to go into the bios and changing the boot sequence?

z0mbi3 · 25 Jan 2007 at 10:00

if your bios lets you pick the drive you boot from then (like the dfi's where you press f1 during boot) then I'd suggest you unplug your XP drive while you install Vista. It's much easier than fussing with the boot records and vista's boot manager.

Zogger · 25 Jan 2007 at 10:21

however, if you do want to use vistas boot manager, just have them both plugged in, and on vista install select the new drive. You'll be able to dual boot fine like that (I do)

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 11:30

Thanks for the input.

TC1 said:
Why not split up the new hard drive and put Vista on one partition and XP on the other? This doesnt appeal to you?

I wanted a new hardrive anyway so i thought it made sense to keep them apart. Then when i wanted to get rid of xp i could just format the old drive.

It it easy to disable/renable vistas duel boot facility, so i can use bios priority for a while if i wish?

TC1 · 25 Jan 2007 at 11:40

Zogger said:
however, if you do want to use vistas boot manager, just have them both plugged in, and on vista install select the new drive. You'll be able to dual boot fine like that (I do)

Looks like a great way to dual boot. Cheers

z0mbi3 · 25 Jan 2007 at 13:51

Just make sure you have the vista HD as the primary, otherwise it'll write a new mbr to the xp HD.

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 14:17

z0mbi3 said:
Just make sure you have the vista HD as the primary, otherwise it'll write a new mbr to the xp HD.

Wont the vista installer give me the option to install on either hardrive anyway? I was planning on loading up xp, putting the vista DVD in, vista insaller loading up and sellecting the new HD in the installer.

z0mbi3 · 25 Jan 2007 at 15:27

Not from my experience. I told it to install to my new blank hd I'd just got and it did install it there, it's just that it put it's boot record info on the hdd in the primary sata channel so that I'd be able to select vista at boot.

jont999 · 25 Jan 2007 at 16:44

I installed Vista RC1 on my secondary drive, once installed everytime it boots up it asks which version of windows to use, was pretty easy.

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 17:52

z0mbi3 said:
Not from my experience. I told it to install to my new blank hd I'd just got and it did install it there, it's just that it put it's boot record info on the hdd in the primary sata channel so that I'd be able to select vista at boot.

So if i formatted the xp drive with the vista boot info at a later date i would be in big trouble?

z0mbi3 · 25 Jan 2007 at 18:02

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to boot from the vista drive. The safest way would be either switching from the bios (in which case unplug your XP drive during installation) or installing vista to your new drive by having that drive on the primary sata channel. If you install it with the vista hd on the primary sata channel then it should add XP to it's own mbr giving you a choice at boot. This would also be easier as then you could just delete xp from the boot selection using any of the few apps out there designed for this.

Hoping someone else can confirm this for me as it's half theory / half implemenation. I'm just using my bios boot options until I scrap my xp drive and put lilo on it.

handyman24602 · 25 Jan 2007 at 23:59

Well looks like ive been well and truely conned with the vista retail 64bit fiasco. Ill install Vista32 bit with old HDD unconnected and keep everything complely seperate since ill be installing 64bit a month or two later when MS decide they want to send it me at my expense.

Although im not quite sure about 64bit now, this stance by MS seems to indicate 64bit might not catch on for a while. Will i really see a performace increase in games and general apps from 64 (my Mobo is 4gb max) ?

z0mbi3 · 26 Jan 2007 at 07:21

handyman24602 said:
Will i really see a performace increase in games and general apps from 64 (my Mobo is 4gb max) ?

That's a different thread that many people have already posted.

In short, 64 bit is the way forward and runs the majority of avaialbe 32 bit apps. Driver support is fab and no worse than it's 32 bit brother.

Save yourself hassle down the line and go 64 bit now - your hardware supports it so why not?

handyman24602 · 26 Jan 2007 at 09:23

z0mbi3 said:
That's a different thread that many people have already posted.

In short, 64 bit is the way forward and runs the majority of avaialbe 32 bit apps. Driver support is fab and no worse than it's 32 bit brother.

Save yourself hassle down the line and go 64 bit now - your hardware supports it so why not?

looks like ill be tiwdling my thumbs untill microsoft can send me the 64 bit disk. Which i wont be able to order untill the 30th

z0mbi3 · 26 Jan 2007 at 11:36

handyman24602 said:
looks like ill be tiwdling my thumbs untill microsoft can send me the 64 bit disk. Which i wont be able to order untill the 30th

It's only 4 days so I wouldn't worry.