Okay, here goes... I have Windows XP Pro SP2 on disc, & Windows Vista Ultimate on Hard Drive. I have 2 HDD's, one for Windows, & one to store my films, music etc. Since Vista is on the HDD i dont think i can install it. I upgraded it, but would rather have both as Vista may look the part, but i miss the efficiency of XP. Is there a way i can install both OS's, & be able to select an OS at startup, whether it be dual booting or going into the BIOS & changing the boot device? I burned the files for Vista to disc but i ended up with a Calibration error. So burning it to disc is apparently out of the question. Does anyone know a way around this?? Thanks for any help/advice you guys give me.
you can definately dual boot both xp and vista, (i did it a while back to experiment) but as for the burning error i have no clue. Only thing i know is when i did it i allready had xp installed and had to install vista from disc on a partition/other hard-drive. use google to search for tutorials on "Dual Booting Vista/Xp" worked for me...
if it's going to be anything like the beta version you'll have no problem making it dual boot but getting rid of that boot choice screen is hard if you want to return to single (run on sentence, nice *W*) I'd just press F8 (i think) and choose between drives to boot from. but thats just me
Ok guys, this is what ive done so far: I right clicked on My Computer & selected manage. I went to disk management & shrunk the Windows volume. I then formatted the unallocated space. Then on unallocated space i right clicked & chose new simple volume. I named it Vista (Drive Letter:V) I installed Vista from the hard drive to the new partition (V). It done it no problem at all so you dont need the disk. I now get the choice to boot into the fresh install of Vista, or the one i upgraded from XP. I did the same thing again with Disc Management, but this time i called it XP (Drive Letter X). Im going to install XP to this new partition. And hopefully ill have the choice of booting into the 2 Vista's & XP. If i do hopefuly i can delete the old XP/Vista partition, format it & use it as extra storage with no Windows files on it. This is a pic of it so far: Thx guys & ill keep you posted
noticing you have vista, can i ask hows it working for you? i have xp on my computer but am getting a new laptop for xmas with vista on it. dont know wether to just get rid of it and whack on xp.
Vista is pretty good. Theres some flaws that need to be sorted out & some programs/hardware need to get sorted out before its worth getting. Id stick with XP if i was u, but if u want to try it, then create 2 partitions & install Vista alongside XP. That way if u dont want it or dont like it u still have XP. Hope this helps.
