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Guest
The hard disk on my PC consists of a 20 GB primary partition and the rest is
logical. Windows XP came preinstalled on my 20 GB primary partition. My aim
is to dual boot XP with Windows Vista Beta 2. I want to create another
separate primary partition for Vista Beta 2 and a additional partition or
logical drive for my data. Also, I want to be able to access my data from
both operating systems. I'm not too sure about doing this but I may attempt
to carry out this dual boot procedure using the steps below:
1. Using the Windows XP Disk Management tool under Computer Management, I
will right click the logical drive and space and select delete from the
context menu. This should convert this to free space.
2. Next, I would right click this unpartitioned or unallocated free space
and select New Partition from the context menu. From here, I would select a
primary partition, create a 30 GB size and format it using NTFS accordingly.
This partition or logical drive will be used to install Windows Vista Beta
2. More importantly, should I mark this partition as active ? or is not
necessary as Vista will sort this out during the actual installation of Vista
on this partition later on.
3. Then I would create a new logical drive for my data using the remaining
space.
4. Finally, I would restart the PC from my Windows Vista BETA 2 Installation
DVD, enter setup mode for that OS, and select the 30GB primary partition to
install Vista Beta 2.
Please note, I will not be using the Windows XP setup and fdisk tools to
partition my hard drive in this case as my PC came preinstalled with XP on a
customised 20 GB partition. Also, other third party software such as
Partition Magic are not available to me.
Please correct me if the above steps are incorrect as I'm not too sure how
to employ this dual boot procedure. I'm not sure whether to make the Vista
partition active or not in step 2 above before proceeding with the
installation of Vista at step 4. At completion, I would like to be able to
choose which OS to boot from at PC startup when presented with the boot
manager loader menu. Lastly, is it possible to change order of the boot menu
using Vista's BCD (Boot Configuration Data) menu which is the equivalent of
XP's Boot.ini file.
I would welcome any assistance from anybody out there.
Thanks,
Martin
logical. Windows XP came preinstalled on my 20 GB primary partition. My aim
is to dual boot XP with Windows Vista Beta 2. I want to create another
separate primary partition for Vista Beta 2 and a additional partition or
logical drive for my data. Also, I want to be able to access my data from
both operating systems. I'm not too sure about doing this but I may attempt
to carry out this dual boot procedure using the steps below:
1. Using the Windows XP Disk Management tool under Computer Management, I
will right click the logical drive and space and select delete from the
context menu. This should convert this to free space.
2. Next, I would right click this unpartitioned or unallocated free space
and select New Partition from the context menu. From here, I would select a
primary partition, create a 30 GB size and format it using NTFS accordingly.
This partition or logical drive will be used to install Windows Vista Beta
2. More importantly, should I mark this partition as active ? or is not
necessary as Vista will sort this out during the actual installation of Vista
on this partition later on.
3. Then I would create a new logical drive for my data using the remaining
space.
4. Finally, I would restart the PC from my Windows Vista BETA 2 Installation
DVD, enter setup mode for that OS, and select the 30GB primary partition to
install Vista Beta 2.
Please note, I will not be using the Windows XP setup and fdisk tools to
partition my hard drive in this case as my PC came preinstalled with XP on a
customised 20 GB partition. Also, other third party software such as
Partition Magic are not available to me.
Please correct me if the above steps are incorrect as I'm not too sure how
to employ this dual boot procedure. I'm not sure whether to make the Vista
partition active or not in step 2 above before proceeding with the
installation of Vista at step 4. At completion, I would like to be able to
choose which OS to boot from at PC startup when presented with the boot
manager loader menu. Lastly, is it possible to change order of the boot menu
using Vista's BCD (Boot Configuration Data) menu which is the equivalent of
XP's Boot.ini file.
I would welcome any assistance from anybody out there.
Thanks,
Martin