Dual booting Vista & XP Pro - help please

Hello,

I have recently ordered a Vista Home Premium PC. I use pcs for work & games, however, I'm lead to believe that Vista gaming performance is currently awful. So, I was wondering, can I dual boot my new pc (pre installed with Vista) by using my current windows XP Pro image? More importantly, if so, how please? I have access to a second H/D eide if need be...please advise.

Many thanks in advance

 

I am running Vista and XP although I had XP installed first.

Have a look at this particularly the sticky #3

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=95&sid=2984e1e0d8bbd2a04df0cce0349bcd32

and this

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/

I used TI to repartition my system drive from just a c partition to a c (XP) and d (Vista). See my earlier posting

 

Thank you for your reply.

However, since the pc is on order and hasn't yet arrived, I decided to ask the company to dual boot Vista with XP home edition. This prompts another question, if I add another hard drive when the pc arrives (to transfer data from my old pc mostly) will this cause any issues? Ie. would both OS's be able to access the second drive fully?

Furthermore, can I install Acronis TI 10 (once per OS?) and restore information saved to either OS too? Obviously for now the only restore required would be from my existing XP drive on my old PC...

If, as I expect, I'm missing the point entirely here, please can someone kindly explain, I've never used a dual boot system before you see.

EDIT* The additional H/D already has an image of my old XP Pro on, though I don't expect to be able to just restore that image fully as the new PC has a dual boot of Vista/XP Home...

 

*bump* sorry to do this, but I'm a little worried and so need advice please, and where else to ask a TI related question?

 

Yes. No problem with a second HD.

daveiw,

See this site about multibooting.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

Your dual boot will be setup as the "Microsoft Way" which has some limitations regarding image/restore if you are not careful.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

 

Okay, thank you, so my PC will be configured the 'microsoft way'. In which case, can you recommend a better third party piece of software to take over the dual boot task please? Furthermore, would that just be an install that would take over the process?

Thank you for your help.

 

Almost certainly.

I'm afraid it's too late for that. Many people use the Microsoft Way and are happy with the result. Hopefully you will like it. I've always avoided it because I know I wouldn't be happy. Your OS are now intertwined as described in Dan Goodell's article and can't be made independent without reinstalling.

As for Boot Managers, I like BootIt NG.

 

Oh dear. I just had a good read of the information you posted (got in late last night and it didn't really sink in) - it seems that I've made a big mistake. Perhaps I should have just got a 3rd party boot manager and done it myself.

As I understand it then, the *only* way to remove xp at some time in the future is to totally re-format the pc and re-install Vista, is this correct?

For the time being, I always like to keep games etc on a seperate drive or partition, given that I probably have the MS dual boot setup, is it still feasible to create yet another partition (using Partition Magic for example) and designate that partition for games etc that both OS's can see and interact with?

By the way Brian, I really am very grateful for your help and patience in this matter, thank you very much.

*EDIT* Also, I assume if I install Acronis True Image 10 on Vista to backup the 'virgin' os in reality I must back up the two out of 3 partitions (assuming I create a 3rd for games) each time in order to restore it correctly, is this correct?

 

daveiw,

Let me point out that I haven't used the Microsoft Way or used Vista in a dual boot. I have seen people (in forums and friends) get into trouble with Win98 and WinXP dual boot by resizing partitions and by deleting Win98. If you delete the Win98 partition then Win XP won't boot. I'm guessing the same would happen with WinXP and Vista.

Try your dual boot and see if you find it satisfactory. Tatou is dual booting with the Microsoft Way and he is happy with the system. Sorry, but it wouldn't suit me. I like all OS to be C: drives when they are booted and hidden when they aren't in use.

Not having tried it, I don't know if Partition Magic will resize a Vista partition properly. I hear that Disk Director Suite has problems with Vista.
I like installing games and large apps in a separate partition too. Makes for easier backup images and keeps the C: drive small for more frequent imaging.

I realize that it's confusing at the moment and I'd like to hear from Tatou about how he is imaging and restoring.

There are some good videos about Dual booting Vista here..

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/examples.html

I'm not much help with your pending system I'm afraid but ask questions anyway as I may be able to assist.

Correct.

 

To my mind there is only one way to avoid current and future problems of dual booting a PC. Install a swappable drive rack. One then has the possibility to install whatever one wants on its own totally independent hard drive. This method really is future proof and is also the way to go when it comes to backups.

Back to the current reality, it IS possible to eliminate XP and continue with Vista without a total reinstallation if a dual boot was set up the Windows way.
Delete the XP installation but keep the original C drive and shrink it down to the minimum size that a partition has to be. Doing this means that the relationship between the partitions is maintained and little space is lost.

 

Daveiw

Its not clear whether the system you got had XP installed first hence it was the original system drive or Vista.

Whilst it will be relatively easy to get back to just getting Vista to boot by using VistaBootPro, recovering the XP partition and adding it to the Vista partition may be problematic if this discussion is any thing to go by
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about91660.html.

I have a spare drive so I might play around to see what I can do with removing XP and try to get Vista to occupy the whole disk. Other options may be to backup each partition (Vista and XP) with TI 10 to a second drive. Boot with the TI Linux disk, wipe the partitions and reinstall Vista partition(which then won't boot because XP is missing), TI should let me increase the size of the partition then I will do a repair on Vista using the Vista install disk. I will have to take into account comments by McTavish See https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=168948

I will post any solutions. I am sure there must be some. Others who have more knowledge than me may be able to help

At present Vista is just something for me to play with while XP is my main OS still. If I decide to go totally Vista (and can't find a way to recover half the drive (80gig) I would most likely format a new drive and reinstall.


Brian I am imaging my entire drive (C&D partitions ) using BartPE with TI10. I don't restore every backup to test it but have restored to a spare SATA drive to test if the full system will restore. It does.

 

My PC had XP Pro and I wanted to add a dual boot of Vista. In my research leading up to this I found that while Vista would install it's own boot manager and allow you to dual boot XP/Vista, it's not recommended because everytime you boot XP, it will delete all Vista restore points. The Vista partition manager needs to be hidden from XP so that won't happen. Vista's boot manager can't do that.

There's even an article about this on the MS web site (sorry, didn't keep the link).

The recommended solution (even in the MS article) is to use a third party boot manager. I went with BootitNG. I carefully followed their documentation and tutorials and when done:
- XP is still on C: and doesn't see the Vista partition
- Vista is on C: and can see the XP partition as D:. Files can be copied between the two.

 

riechert,

Thanks for your comments and experience. I've watched the same TeraByte video about installing Vista into its own partition. It's very informative. At the end of the video he said (but didn't say you had to) you could remove the WinXP D: drive letter using Disk Management. Both OS would still be C: drive but neither would see the other. That's what I'd do but do you see any disadvantages in leaving D: drive there? Cross OS corruption?

 

As I understand it, Vista is smart enough to leave XP's system files alone while XP doesn't know the format of Vista's files so, thinking the Vista files are corrupted, it deletes them. So it's OK for Vista to see the XP partition but not OK for XP to see the Vista partition. That's how I have it set up and, in my limited Vista experience, I haven't seen any problems.

But the more I played with Vista the less I was favorably impressed I became. I haven't booted Vista in over a month and no inclination to any time soon.

 

I've only used Vista from a Virtual Machine and I wasn't impressed either. I'll look again in a years time.

 

The article Tatou was referring you to is specifically:
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about88231.html?sid=53e3f32c921030d09a9cdb255573657b

However, you could get dual booting by choosing the boot hard drive in BIOS. I do this since I don't have to change back and forth too often. That way you can leave your Vista in its pristine condition. Install a second hard drive, select it as the boot drive and restore your WinXP image there.

Go into BIOS and change the boot drive any time you want to change operating systems.

 

daveiw

I tried various combinations of just restoring Vista from my dual boot drive and them recovering all the drive to a Vista only drive but had no success. I placed Vista in the same place on the drive as on the original drive, made the whole drive a Vista partition but it would not boot nor would the Vista DVD repair function see the Vista installation.

The problem as far I can see lies in the fact that I had XP installed and then installed Vista. The system boots from the XP partition then calls Vista on the Vista partition when I select Vista on the dual boot screen.

However in your case it seems that you have Vista installed first and then XP on another partition on the drive and may at some time in the future wish to get rid of Xp but do not wish to have reinstall Vista.

I haven't tried it but have a look at this for removing XP

http://www.apcstart.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp#restoring

At the bottom it shows how to remove XP and recover the XP partition so its all part of the Vista partition. Your big concern was that you would have to reinstall Vista and format the whole drive.

Also read all the comments under the tutorial and this start page for the article.

http://www.apcstart.com/node/5162/

As I said before I am only playing around with Vista but it seems that for long term dual booting the use of a 3rd party such as BootNG or separate swapable drives as described by Xpilot is the way to go. In fact I may remove Vista from my XP drive and put it on a removable drive so I can play around without worrying about losing stuff

 

Is it this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529