Dual boot, can Vista be pointed to XP games on a different volume?

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optical10

Dual boot, can Vista be pointed to XP games on a different volume?

I'm currently running XP and I want to install Vista on a separate partition
so I have a dual boot scenario. However, under XP my games reside in a
different volume on my c: drive system partition. In fact my games are on my
separate 320 GB hard drive, in a separate program files directory so as not
to lose this vast quantity of new and old games if Windows XP need to
reinstall.

I seem to remember reading in a beta article that it would be possible to
dual boot from XP to Vista and then point Vista, after the dual boot install,
to my games directory on a different volume hard drive partition.

Was I imagining this perfect scenario or is this in fact possible?

Any help appreciated before I install Vista ultimate, because I do not want
to have to reinstall 50 plus games, thanking you Optical10
 
optical10 said:
Dual boot, can Vista be pointed to XP games on a different volume?

I'm currently running XP and I want to install Vista on a separate
partition
so I have a dual boot scenario. However, under XP my games reside in a
different volume on my c: drive system partition. In fact my games are on
my
separate 320 GB hard drive, in a separate program files directory so as
not
to lose this vast quantity of new and old games if Windows XP need to
reinstall.

I seem to remember reading in a beta article that it would be possible to
dual boot from XP to Vista and then point Vista, after the dual boot
install,
to my games directory on a different volume hard drive partition.

Was I imagining this perfect scenario or is this in fact possible?

Any help appreciated before I install Vista ultimate, because I do not
want
to have to reinstall 50 plus games, thanking you Optical10
Click to expand...

Sure, Say you boot into Vista and it see's your XP drive as D:

Run the game installer and install the game to D:\Program Files\etc\etc\etc\
instead of C:\Program Files\etc\etc\etc\

That'll setup Vista with all the system files necessary to run the game, and
re-copy over the program files to your XP drive (Shouldn't effect the XP
install). When you reboot into XP the game should still run. Unless the game
stores configuration files in the Program Files folder (which is a no-no
anyways), or some other problem should arise, but for the most part this
should work assuming the XP drive is NTFS format since Vista no longer has
the ability to read FAT32 hard drives. (I think)
 
Andy said:
Sure, Say you boot into Vista and it see's your XP drive as D:

Run the game installer and install the game to D:\Program Files\etc\etc\etc\
instead of C:\Program Files\etc\etc\etc\

That'll setup Vista with all the system files necessary to run the game, and
re-copy over the program files to your XP drive (Shouldn't effect the XP
install). When you reboot into XP the game should still run. Unless the game
stores configuration files in the Program Files folder (which is a no-no
anyways), or some other problem should arise, but for the most part this
should work assuming the XP drive is NTFS format since Vista no longer has
the ability to read FAT32 hard drives. (I think)
Click to expand...

Thank You "Andy [YaYa]" for your reply, it's been useful and I will have to
try it on a game per game basics from what you are saying as many of my games
are older games which I really do not want to have two get rid of.
The other thing is I'm not in a hurry, but I'll do a test installation of
the oldest game to see how it goes report back within a month.
Once again I thank you for your reply,Optical10
 
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