Dual Boot VISTA XP and use of Acronis True Image

  • Thread starter Thread starter jm7
  • Start date Start date
J

jm7

From reading the posts here I have gleaned that you need a 3rd party program
to create a partition before you can do a dual boot with XP and VISTA.

I currently have XP on a single physical drive C:

Would Acronis True Image do the trick to create the partition? I have read
in other posts that the VISTA DVD has the partitioning tools in it. or are
there some free partitioning tools I can use?

Thanks in advance.
 
Hello,

Do NOT use Acronis to format the Vista partition - its formatting is not
compatible with Vista.

Windows Vista comes with a built-in tool that you may use to partition free
space and delete/format partitions. If you need to shrink/expand/split
partitions, you will need to use a third party tool.

You can access the Vista tools durring setup when it asks you which
partition to install to - just click the Advanced button.
 
Thanks Jim,

Will what you suggested allow a dual boot with XP and Vista?

I have downloaded the VistaBoot program.

I take it/guess the steps are :

1. Either install from within XP or boot from DVD (which is better?)
2. Create partition on C Drive from Vista's own tools - will it create a
Primary partition?
3. Boot into Vista - run VistaBoot - to setup Dual boot?

The thing that has confused me is the advice that Vista's tools won't create
a primary partition on C Drive when XP is already setup and that Vista's own
tools won't allow dual booting.

I have aso read you increase memory by attaching USB drives - has this
feature been implemented in RC1 or is it just a rumour?

I appreciate your help here.

John
 
Create a partition from Windows XP then install Vista to the new partition.
I'm triple booting XP Home, XP Pro and Vista and always create partitions
from within Windows XP.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
Thanks John,

But my C drive is fully formatted so I guess this is why XP Pro cannot
create a new partition as there is no free space or unallocated space.

I wonder if the VISTA DVD will create a partition in the spare space of my
fully formatted C Drive.

John
 
I've tried True Image Workstation 9.1 a couple of time to move Vista to a
different hard drive and had no problems. I always boot from the Acronis
recovery CD and image or clone from there. What problems are people seeing?
 
No it won't. What you need to do is 'shrink' your C: partition to create
some unallocated space for another partition to be created. You can either
use a third party partitioning application such as Partition magic, or
Paragon Partition manager. The Vista DVD can extend a partition, but not, as
far as i know, shrink it. However, i believe you you can shrink a partition
from within the vista operating system, via disk managment. However this is
no good to you as you currently can't install vista. i suggest you use
something like Partition Magic or Paragon to shrink the partition.

My system has recovery disks and i have this same problem whenever i
re-install. XP always takes up all the hard drive space and i have to use
paragon to shrink the main partition contianing XP (usually down to 20GB) to
allow me plenty of space to creat further partitions.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
I've tried True Image Workstation 9.1 a couple of time to move Vista to a
different hard drive and had no problems. I always boot from the Acronis
recovery CD and image or clone from there. What problems are people
seeing?
Click to expand...

The problem is the way Acronis formats NTFS. If you don't do anything that
actually formats a partition, it should be OK - but Windows Vista does not
like the way Acronis formats NTFS partitions.
 
Will what you suggested allow a dual boot with XP and Vista?
Click to expand...

Hello,

No, not in your case - I didn't realize your hard drive was already full
partitioned. Please follow John's instructions.
I have aso read you increase memory by attaching USB drives - has this
feature been implemented in RC1 or is it just a rumour?
Click to expand...

This feature is called ReadyBoost and does work in RC1. Simply plug in a
good-quality memory stick and Windows will ask if you wish to enable this
feature.
 
Specifically, users that format their Vista partition using Acronis end up
seeing chkdsk being run every time they reboot into XP and/or Vista, and
their event log gets filled with entries from the NTFS driver talking about
internal data structures being foobar'd.
 
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