Vista to XP To Vista/XP Dual Boot???

hollywoodhoppy

yes its as confusing as it sounds :P I have a dell xps and got Windows Vista upgrade which i stupidly installed and has left my computer with about half of my hardware useless!

So i got a copy of vista ultimate and am thinking about wiping the whole computer to dual boot with boot. how do i start this?? i have checked for guides online but havent come across any for my particular situation!!

Help appreciated!!

Voipjunkie

You can install either first and then the other You need 2 partitions or 2 separate drives


http://www.apcstart.com/5023/dual_booting_xp_with_vista

If you look they have the vista with Xp tutorial as well

youcancallmeal

I'm also planning on wiping my PC shortly and installing Vista and XP with a dual boot in place.
From all the guides I've read it seems pretty straight forward. Just install Vista then create a second partition using Vista's own partition manager then install XP to that partition. Finally use a program such as VistaBootPRO to sort out the boot paths.

Another useful guide can be found here

d_mc_a

The Handiest Way that I find:

Say you have a 200 gig blank hard drive. Using the vista install CD.

1 - Create 2 30 gig partitions and 1 partition of whats left.

2 - Install Vista on one 30 gig partition.

3 - Install XP on the other 30 gig partition. This will erase vista from the MBR and replace it with XP

4 - boot the vista cd and use the repair function on the disk to repair the vista startup MBR.

5 - When you restart, vista will boot up but will have erased XP from the MBR

Now, just get a third party app to configure your vista MBR to include XP, mainly because it looks nicer than XP's one. The best app to use here is EasyBCD. Note: EasyBCD will only work in vista as vista handles the boot config differently to XP.

hollywoodhoppy

Now thats service, thank you very much, was thinking of paying a guy to do this but feck that i'll throw a boot at it myself. Just say i back everything up onto my external harddrive, can i restore it to my new install or would i just need to copy anything i could onto it with copy/paste and do the same back onto the computer?

hollywoodhoppy

Now, i've been reading around, i think i'll start as follows

1. Back up everthing important on my external harddrive.
2. Partition drive using the tool vista has to do that
3. Install Vista Ultimate
4. Look for drivers etc.
5. Reinstall my original xp disc using a dual boot guide

Does this seem semi reasonable to anyone??

matt-dublin

a lot of the xp drivers will get you going in vista, try them they should have come with one of your dell cd's

i wouldn't bother dual booting as xp takes up 4 or so Gb's and vista ultimate takes 15Gbs so you're just wasting space IMO

hollywoodhoppy

i appreciate your opinion matt. would you say ditch xp or vista? i like the idea of vista but need to run applications such as autocad 2002 which wont install on vista

matt-dublin

depends on the spec of your pc, i prefer vista but ifs too resource hungry.

If you've got 2gb ram and a dual core processor i would say vista,

If you've got less than a gig of ram i would go xp

vista also has a compatibilty mode option, where you can install and run things in xp/2000/nt/98/me compatability mode

subway

d_mc_a wrote:

The Handiest Way that I find:

Say you have a 200 gig blank hard drive. Using the vista install CD.

1 - Create 2 30 gig partitions and 1 partition of whats left.

2 - Install Vista on one 30 gig partition.

3 - Install XP on the other 30 gig partition. This will erase vista from the MBR and replace it with XP

4 - boot the vista cd and use the repair function on the disk to repair the vista startup MBR.

5 - When you restart, vista will boot up but will have erased XP from the MBR

Now, just get a third party app to configure your vista MBR to include XP, mainly because it looks nicer than XP's one. The best app to use here is EasyBCD. Note: EasyBCD will only work in vista as vista handles the boot config differently to XP.

first install xp onto one partition
then install vista onto another.

simple as that, vista will detect the xp install and add it to the boot menu

hollywoodhoppy

cheers lads,

ye its a high spec dell xps, 2gigs of ram and all the rest.

Do i need to format drive or anything or is that necessary? the computer came with a load of crappy dell software that was very resource hungry at the start.

When i install these, i take it it deletes all existing files such as music etc? i'll back it all up, be handy if it didnt delete it tho

matt-dublin

it will format everything as vista is an image, unless you upgrade from xp, but i suggest installing clean as it will run smoother.

microsot os upgrades never work properly!

and yes BACK EVERYTHING UP

Remembering>
My documents folders,
music folders
Favourits folders
documents on the desktop

and anything else you can think of

Capt'n Midnight

hollywoodhoppy wrote:

i appreciate your opinion matt. would you say ditch xp or vista? i like the idea of vista but need to run applications such as autocad 2002 which wont install on vista

2007 don't work either but 2008 does :rolleyes:

if it need in a production environment maybe wait for service pack 1

Voipjunkie

matt-dublin wrote:

a lot of the xp drivers will get you going in vista, try them they should have come with one of your dell cd's

i wouldn't bother dual booting as xp takes up 4 or so Gb's and vista ultimate takes 15Gbs so you're just wasting space IMO

It depends on how much space he has on the PC if he has plenty of space it is handy to have an XP install rather than messing around with drivers form xp on vista

hollywoodhoppy

Ok lads, i got vista ultimate 64 bit installed over the weekend and got a driver for the graphics card working from the dell website, not sure if its at full capacity. Have people been doing much gaming with vista? found all my old files in 'windows.old' file and moved them to my new documents folder. Can i delete this now or do i need to keep it for the program files etc?