XP / Vista dual boot from scratch

Kazz

Kazz

Kazz

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Hey

Ive had a search through a few threads to do with dual booting, but im still not 100% sure if im going the right way about it, so any help would be glady appreciated.

Im currently running Win XP Home (fully updated) on a Q6600 / 8800GT rig and im expecting Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit to arrive soon. Ive had it for around 8months and its a little cluttered so i thought id do a format to speed things up and start from scratch, lot of crap on the hard disk :).

Would i be right in thinking its best to install XP on one partition, fully update it and only after thats done, install Vista on a seperate partition?
Only other thing im unclear about is how do i choose which OS to run? is there a choice on the boot screen or do you have to run some 3rd party software?

Thanks
 
the way i always do it, is use two hard drives, then use the bios to choose which one boots

but if you install xp first, (on partition 1), then vista on partition 2, vista will create a boot menu for you :) (it won't ask you if you want it to make one)
 
You must install XP first on the C drive otherwise Vista will overwrite the XP boot loader.

Then install Vista and it will automatically add the Vista boot loader files to manage the dual boot so you will get a menu which allows you to choose.

To manage this menu you need to go into the system\advanced properties\startup & recovery tab.

Or you can just install the freeware : http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Which makes it easy top manage/rename OS boot entries. If you use the MS way it is overly complex and you can mess it up.

Also be aware that Vista system recovery does not seem to work when you have XP installed as well so you may as well disable it to save disk space.

This is because Vista gets confused if it is not on the C drive (AFAIK XP need to put its boot loader on the C drive). Not seen anyway around this yet either.
 
Thanks for clearing those up

AWPC said:
This is because Vista gets confused if it is not on the C drive (AFAIK XP need to put its boot loader on the C drive). Not seen anyway around this yet either.
Click to expand...

So you cant install XP on say, E:? meh, ah well, can live without system recovery, but does that include system restore as well? (or does Vista have its own variation of that?)

Just been backing up / downloading drivers and another thing occurred to me. I do plan on using XP for older games that have been having probs running on vista, so if i install all the XP drivers in the XP partition, would it conflict with all the 64bit vista drivers from the vista partition?

...think thats all :)
oh, and vista just arrived, gotta love ocuk's delivery time
 
nope, they'll be two separate installs totally :)

one thing that might well not work, is say you install ermm.. Crysis on xp, if you try to run that game from the same folder from the vista partition, it may not work (some info might be stored in the xp registry)

some games it doesn't matter with (like all steam games)
 
Great, thx for the help, will no doubt be back soon with a thread along the lines of ":eek: vista killed my pc!" :)
 
Kazz said:
Just been backing up / downloading drivers
Click to expand...


since you said that i figured there's no use suggesting anything else :)

use 'vistabootpro' to fix the boot if it doesn't do it itself


also, when in vista.. do these to speed it up..

download tweakuac, and set it to silent mode (the annoying 'are you sure' popups)
open windows defender, go to tools, options and untick 'real-time file scanning'
i also disable system restore, takes up tons of space
 
Kazz said:
Thanks for clearing those up



So you cant install XP on say, E:? meh, ah well, can live without system recovery, but does that include system restore as well? (or does Vista have its own variation of that?)

Just been backing up / downloading drivers and another thing occurred to me. I do plan on using XP for older games that have been having probs running on vista, so if i install all the XP drivers in the XP partition, would it conflict with all the 64bit vista drivers from the vista partition?

...think thats all :)
oh, and vista just arrived, gotta love ocuk's delivery time
Click to expand...
System Restore on Vista will not work so if you get a problem in Vista booting off the Vista DVD to use the recovery options is usually a waste of time. It can still fix some stuff but if any Vista system files get corrupted you cannot boot into XP and fix them as it will not allow it you need to get used to using command prompt + cacls to remove the attributes which protect system files from being replaced in XP. Would not worry about it too much until/if you need to TBH. As for games I myself use my main gaming system with some games installed on XP but you can run most just by going into Vista and running the exe from the XP partition as its all NTFS and very few use the registry anyway.
 
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