Dual boot, 2 hard drives vista first

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Guest

Hi,
I am a keen gamer and although i love vista the compatability problems mean
that i may need to set up dual boot.

I have Vista home premium 64bit on my C drive right now.

I plan to get another drive, get XP 64bit, instal it on that hard drive and
have a dual boot sytem to allow me to play games i can't play right now.

I have tried reading up but most of the info talks about dual boots with XP
first or on partitions rather than seperate hard drives and talks about
having to repair vista.

So my question is: how would i set up my pc to have Vista on one drive and
XP on the other and essentialy just have a start up menu to choose which one
i want to use on that login?

My logic states just instal on seperate hard drives and all things will be
fine, but reading up it seems not the case, so basicaly HELP! :))

Any advice or help would be appreciated


-Kev
 
Hi,
I am a keen gamer and although i love vista the compatability problems mean
that i may need to set up dual boot.
Click to expand...

i'll follow the answers up close. Because that sounds like a cool
setup. My logic states that you need to format your second drive with
NTFS, at least, the OS partition. But when it comes to dual boot
mechanics I don't know much. I ams cared. I tried once to run win 98
and XP in dual boot...but I failed miserably :-)

After that I though why bother anyway. Games run fine in XP and the
ones that don't...**** em.

Do you know that I run XP in win98 style? LOL! I never saw any of the
fancy XP style hehehe.
 
Kev said:
Hi,
I am a keen gamer and although i love vista the compatability problems
mean
that i may need to set up dual boot.

I have Vista home premium 64bit on my C drive right now.

I plan to get another drive, get XP 64bit, instal it on that hard drive
and
have a dual boot sytem to allow me to play games i can't play right now.

I have tried reading up but most of the info talks about dual boots with
XP
first or on partitions rather than seperate hard drives and talks about
having to repair vista.

So my question is: how would i set up my pc to have Vista on one drive
and
XP on the other and essentialy just have a start up menu to choose which
one
i want to use on that login?

My logic states just instal on seperate hard drives and all things will be
fine, but reading up it seems not the case, so basicaly HELP! :))

Any advice or help would be appreciated
Click to expand...

I haven't tried this, but perhaps it would work.
With only one drive connected, install Vista. After doing your typical
setup configuration of first boot-up as a user, shutdown and connect the
second drive. On startup, as soon as you have control, remove the drive
letter from the second drive, so your Vista only sees the drive it is
installed on. Install WXP on the second drive, using a similar procedure.
Each time at boot up, hit the function key that allows selecting which drive
to boot from.

I'd be interested in hearing if this actually works and keeps the systems
separate so that both system's recovery stores work.

-Paul Randall
 
Paul said:
I haven't tried this, but perhaps it would work.
With only one drive connected, install Vista. After doing your typical
setup configuration of first boot-up as a user, shutdown and connect the
second drive. On startup, as soon as you have control, remove the drive
letter from the second drive, so your Vista only sees the drive it is
installed on. Install WXP on the second drive, using a similar procedure.
Each time at boot up, hit the function key that allows selecting which drive
to boot from.

I'd be interested in hearing if this actually works and keeps the systems
separate so that both system's recovery stores work.

-Paul Randall
Click to expand...
I have XP 64 bit on C: and Vista Ultimate 64 bit on V:
The system has been working well for 4 months
See http://www.vistabootpro.org/index-changelog.php
for an easy way to set the startup choices
Carl F
 
Paul said:
Does WXP wipe out Vista's restore points?

-Paul Randall
Click to expand...
I do not use restore points. I do frequent complete
multiple partition backups to a network drive and an internal second
hard drive (belt and suspenders).
I read that the restore points get removed.

Carl F
 
So ho do i make vista 'not see' the second hard drive, and for that matter
not let XP see my vista drive?

-kev
 
Attach your new second drive, set the BIOS so that it is first in boot
priority. Install XP. Reset the BIOS to have your Vista drive as first in
boot priority. Download and install EasyBCD or VistaBootPro and then add a
legacy system to the boot process, pointing to your XP system. Reboot and
try the legacy system. If it doesn't work, copy the ntldr, ntdetect.com and
boot.ini files to the Vista drive. Change the boot.ini file to point xp to
the proper drive
 
You need a third party boot manager.

Kev said:
So ho do i make vista 'not see' the second hard drive, and for that matter
not let XP see my vista drive?

-kev
Click to expand...
 
Ok, i just descovered something:

in the advanced system menu, go to start up and recovery. in there there
are some settings that imply that vista can control which os i use.

eg Default operating system
and time to display list of OS's

so what does this mean, that it is as simple as i think (just instal XP on
second hard drive and make sure vista is primary boot) or is it still gonna
be complicated?
 
If you install XP with Vista as your first drive in boot priority, you will
overwrite the Vista boot with the XP boot and you won't be able to boot
Vista. You can correct this later with a Startup repair using the Vista
install DVD, you may need to run it up to 4 times before it works. Your
choice of my original recommendation or this one.
 
Default OS is the one that will be booted after the time to display list
is up unless another has been chosen. In other words if you don't chose
an OS in the time to display the default OS will be booted.
 
Ok i should have clarified a bit more, i meant: What does this mean for how i
instal a second OS? i kinda already got the fact that they would be
displayed and i had 30 secs to choose.

i can't believe how complicated this is gonna be when it should be really
simple, and how can i overwrite the boot if its on a second hard drive?
surely that would prevent XP trying to take over as primary, what if i don't
have the vista one connected when i install the XP one? that way XP can't
overwrite the vista boot.
 
Do you not know how to go into your BIOS and change boot priority?
Disconnecting the Vista drive will work, but when you reconnect it, you
still should go into your BIOS and check which drive is first in priority
(some will leave the XP drive first - others will switch back to the Vista
drive). In Vista, you can download and install either EasyBCD or
VistaBootPro and add a legacy entry pointing to your XP drive.
 
It doesn't affect what you are doing.

Ok i should have clarified a bit more, i meant: What does this mean for how i
instal a second OS? i kinda already got the fact that they would be
displayed and i had 30 secs to choose.

i can't believe how complicated this is gonna be when it should be really
simple, and how can i overwrite the boot if its on a second hard drive?
surely that would prevent XP trying to take over as primary, what if i don't
have the vista one connected when i install the XP one? that way XP can't
overwrite the vista boot.
Click to expand...
 
i am ok with the bios bit ans selecting drive priority, its the adding a
legacy entry bit i am not familiar with, can someone elaborate on how to do
that bit for me please? after that i'll give it a try (after backing
important stuff to DVD first) in the next week or so.

Thanks

Kev
 
First of all I believe XP 32bit is better for games...but its your choice.
Check your BIOS and see if it will let you pick which HD to boot from by
means of an F key during the boot process.This way you dont need a
"software" dual boot.
In order to create the dual boot I describe you disconnect the drive that
Vista is installed on and proceed with a normal XP installation.This keeps
each OS boot files on their respective drives.Once you have XP setup to your
satisfaction you reconnect the Vista drives and upon boot use the F function
to pick which drive(OS) to boot from.
If your BIOS does not support this option you would need to enter the Bios
and set the boot order accordingly.
Since there is no cross referencing of OS's on the MBR on any of the 2
drives it is very easy to undo the "dual" boot...remove/format the OS no
longer needed.

here is a website that explains the "software" Dual boot.........read down
till close to the end.you wont need the diskpart instructions.
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
peter
 
Kev,
Visit each of the sites for Vista Boot Pro and EasyBCD about adding a
legacy entry and installing XP as the second o/s.
Here's the VistaBootPro site
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88231


Additionally here's some other articles on the subject for EasyBCD
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
http://www.apcstart.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
http://www.setup32.com/resource-guides/windows-vista/how-to-dualboot-vista-and-xp-with-vista-.php

And imo, the best of them all for configuration of dual boot and
bootmanaged systems: BootItNG
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/examples.html

Background info: normally for dual booting it is recommended to install
XP first, then Vista. With Vista installed as the second o/s, and after
complete install the user will be provided with two options in a dual
boot system.
Vista and the Other Windows Legacy O/S.

Since you are doing the opposite, XP basically isn't smart enough to set
it up the normal way and breaks Vista's control.....thus one has to
manually add the option for the legacy o/s, and/or restore the
bootloader, move necessary files from the XP drive to the Vista
drive(ref. John Barnes posts), and in some cases perform a repair
install of Vista.

The use of VistaBootPro or EasyBCD in your case makes part of the Vista
first/XP second process much easier. Visit the sites and read the
articles to familiarize yourself.

With respect to Restore points..yes XP breaks Vista's restore points.
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/preven...ng_lost_when_dual_booting_with_windows_xp.htm

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Good luck!
...winston
MS-MVP Windows Live Mail
 
Read the info provided by winston, especially the loss of restore points and
shadow copies in Vista. BootItNG is the best solution to that problem. I
prefer EasyBCD and there you start the program, select add/remove entries,
in the bottom section (add an Entry) in Version select Windows/Windows
Vista/Longhorn, point to the drive that it has been assigned in 'computer' ,
Change the name to what you want to see in the boot menu, and click on add
entry. Reboot and check the new entry.

In a few cases it will be necessary to copy the ntldr ntdetect.com and
boot.ini files to the Vista drive from the XP drive. You will have to
change the rdisk entry in the boot.ini file from 0 to 1 if you have either
made the XP drive first in boot priority or disconnected the Vista drive.
Otherwise be prepared to run startup repair on the Vista DVD up to 4 times.
 
Ok thanks ladies and gents, leave that with me, and i'll get it sorted over
the next week or two (damn work interfering with more important things! hehe)
and i'll let you know how i get on by replying here.

Thanks for all the advice

-Kev
 
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