Some help with my new dual boot most appreciated...

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10 May 2008
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Hello all.

Recieved my new PC last week - E8400 Core Duo, 4 gig ram, 1024mb 8800GT on an Asus P5K SE.

Put my full copy of XP Pro onto the smaller of the two installed HD's - 160gb. Didn't create any partitions, nor on the larger 500gb HD.

Today I got Vista Ultimate from a mate who is into music production and so on, and had discarded it soon after purchase due to massive incompatablity with his numerous programmes.

Me, I just want to see what its like, so figured on dual boot.

What a flipping minefield of info is available with regard to this, and particularly in regard to installing on seperate HD's.

Nevertheless, I threw caution to the wind, and booted from the Vista DVD, choosing to install to the empty 500gb HD. It installed fine, and all I did on completion was resize desktop to max res, looked at 'Computer', which showed the larger drive as C, and the XP drive as D, and then hit restart.

Hit 'An older version of Windows' when I was presented with the boot menu, and prepared for what I thought would probably be boot issues that many seem to have suffered with dual boot Vista/XP setups.

But to my suprise XP loaded without a hitch...

Have I just been lucky? My main concern is that when I check My Computer in XP, it says it is on C, and that the larger Vista drive is D. Will the fact that both OS's think they are on drive C be a problem? Is there any way I can ensure that they don't mess with each other, for instance disabling the 'spare' HD in each OS, more importantly in Vista I guess, rather than XP. Is that at all possible?

Any advice is most appreciated, since although initial signs are that they are both working fine, I am **** it that something will go wrong...

Many thanks.

Al.
 
I take it you mean its normal that both OS's believe they are on drive C?

Just completed installation of all the Vista 64 drivers for all my hardware, plus downloaded and installed windows updates.

Thus far no issues, and am posting this from back in my XP installation.

I'm still a bit suprised that it has all gone so smoothly, as my online investigations into dual boot setups returned so many tales of users who ran into boot problems...

Ah well, I shouldn't complain.

Now to spend a few days messing with Vista! :-)
 
I knew there had to be some potential issue! But I'm also more inclined towards system reinstall if anything goes t*ts up, rather than system recovery, so can't see this being an issue for me.

All still going fine for the moment...
 
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