[janlafata]

And I guess I'm referring to what happens when you load two Operating systems on your computer. If that's not the correct term then please update me. Here's the deal...I have XP running just fine on one of three partitions of the first of my two hard drives. Since I'm not sure about Vista yet I think I mmight install it so it can dual boot into either one. So my question is...how do I do that? Do I just install it in the partition of my choice and that's that? And is it a big hassle when you have to pick which one you want to use on a particular day? I'm assuming what will come up is the DOS screen that shows two operating systems and you select one or the other.

Also I have a question about the partition I want to put Vista in. It's my H drive and it's on my second hard drive, It's only some 15 GB total space now so should I add some more to it with Partition Magic to allow more room for Vista?

Thanks

[craigal]

Hi,

Setting up a dual boot with XP and Vista is really as easy as you described.

I purchased Vista Home Premium Upgrade. From XP I inserted the Vista DVD to start the installation. It gave me a choice of upgrading the exting installation or installing a fresh copy into another partition. I chose the second option.

The installation continued smoothly. Now when I boot a get a new boot menu with the choice of running Vista or My older operating system. If I select older OS then I get the priginal XP boot menu.

Cheers

Craig

[uhaligani]

Your second question. Certainly, if it is no hassle, you should expand the partition. Assuming you want to go the whole way and also install your software, I would suggest that you expand to 40 gbs, which would allow for every possibility. Otherwise 20 Gbs minimum

[ChrisPC]

I did the same type of dual boot installation (3 partitions: XP, Vista, data storage), and all was good in the world until I tried to backup the Vista partition using "Windows Complete PC Restore". It errored out, stating that not all system data was on the selected volume (or something like that). I went online and found a discussion of the problem, in which someone suggested that the error occurred because the first partition (the one with XP and also the Vista bootloader???) was formatted it using FAT32. I booted to XP and converted the first partition to NTFS, but then the Vista boot menu went away. I'm hoping that the repair boot option on the Vista DVD will fix this (will try it tonight). At any rate, if you have XP installed and want to install Vista on a different partition on the same hard drive, I suggest converting all partitions to NTFS before installing Vista.

[ClickCardo]

I have an OEM XP Pro on a partition that I want to keep with that pc (by EULA standards).
I want to buy an UPGRADE version not the FULL version of Vista and install that on a 2nd partition on the same drive as dual boot. You say I can just pop the Vista UPGRADE DVD in and choose upgrade and everything is okay.

Every place else on the web I've read if you use an UPGRADE version of Vista it deactivates/permanently your existing XP. Are you saying that is not correct?

Thanks
CC

[uhaligani]

Mayb Chris or another reader can catch that. I have never used the OEM version or done an upgrade.

[ChrisPC]

By "upgrade" MS assumes you want to overwrite XP. I don't know if you can use an upgrade SKU of Vista to do what is essentially a clean install on another partition (in order to keep XP, too). A friend of mine has an upgrade SKU, but he was trying to go from XP Pro to Vista Home, which is not allowed, but he was permitted to do a clean install of Vista. When I see him next I'll ask if he remembers if was given the option to select another partition for the install. In short, I dunno.

[ChrisPC]

I just reread what craigal wrote (see above). He says doing the dual-boot install worked for him, and he says he used a Vista upgrade package. I have not touched an upgrade package yet, so I can neither confirm nor deny that it would work. For it to work, you would need at least two partitions, and you would need to manually select the second partition for the install.