Installing VISTA on a Production Machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Todd
  • Start date Start date
T

Todd

I am not a member of MSDN or Technet, so I am waiting for the public
distribution.

I don't have a machine that I can dedicate to VISTA, but I do have a spare
hard drive. Just how evil and dangerous is VISTA?

If I install it multi-boot on its own hard drive (N:\), will it reach out
and corrupt Windows 2000 on the C:\ drive?

Another alternative would be to disconnect the C:\ drive with Windows 2000
installed, connect the spare hard drive, and install VISTA on the spare hard
drive, but swapping hard drives a couple times a day would be a pain.

Todd
 
Its rough decision, and Vista is still rough around edges. Installing Vista
in a dual boot configuration should pose no problems though, recommendation
would be to launch setup from within Windows 2000, instead of booting from
the disk. Select the N: partition during setup and it should install without
any problems.

I still find it risky using Vista on my production machine, thats why I
"always backup my data" before doing any installation. Make sure you check
that drive for any errors before installing.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
 
Thanks Andre

I thought of something else after I posted.

My desktop (Windows 2000 Pro) is on a LAN with my wife's desktop (Windows XP
home), and our laptop (Windows XP Pro). The two desktops are cabled to the
router and the laptop is wi-fi. Would they be at risk?

My wife's computer has a relatively big hard drive which is where I put the
back-ups from my desktop.

Todd
 
Todd said:
I am not a member of MSDN or Technet, so I am waiting for the public
distribution.

I don't have a machine that I can dedicate to VISTA, but I do have a spare
hard drive. Just how evil and dangerous is VISTA?

If I install it multi-boot on its own hard drive (N:\), will it reach out
and corrupt Windows 2000 on the C:\ drive?

Another alternative would be to disconnect the C:\ drive with Windows 2000
installed, connect the spare hard drive, and install VISTA on the spare hard
drive, but swapping hard drives a couple times a day would be a pain.
Click to expand...

Another possibility would be to disconnect the C:\ drive with W2K
installed, connect the spare HDD and install Win Vista on the spare
HDD, and afterwards connect both HDDs and switch between the W2K disk
and the the Win Vista disk in the BIOS boot setting.

(That's what I did/do with WinXP on a 120.0 GB disk and with Win98SE
on a 1.1 GB disk - just for fun;-)

Roy
 
No, it won't affect the other desktops. Is the Windows 2000 Pro machine a
Gateway to the Internet for the other machines? If so, make sure you back up
any necessary settings before installing, just in case (God forbids)
anything goes wrong. As Todd mentioned, you will get a new bootloader on C
that will be permanent unless you format and reinstall Windows 2000 or XP on
that system, but its not a problem. You can use VistaBootPRO to manage and
edit the Windows Vista Boot Manager and make specific entries your default
OS on boot up.

http://www.vistabootpro.org/
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
 
I am not a member of MSDN or Technet, so I am waiting for the public
distribution.

I don't have a machine that I can dedicate to VISTA, but I do have a
spare hard drive. Just how evil and dangerous is VISTA?

If I install it multi-boot on its own hard drive (N:\), will it
reach out and corrupt Windows 2000 on the C:\ drive?

Another alternative would be to disconnect the C:\ drive with
Windows 2000 installed, connect the spare hard drive, and install
VISTA on the spare hard drive, but swapping hard drives a couple
times a day would be a pain.

Todd
Click to expand...

Vista will put its own boot loader on the C:\ drive. If you decide you
no longer want Vista, you can either just live with having a foreign boot
loader or try to restore the XP boot loader (and run the risk of messing
something up). Back up!
 
You can also use another boot loader program. I use BootIt NG and it works
fine.

When you install Vista it will rewrite the MBR and load the Vista boot
loader. When I am finished installing Vista I re-activate BootIt and have my
original boot loader back, listing all 8 operating systems I use.

Norm
 
Just be aware that no one is going to encourage you to do this. Microsoft
does not give online or phone support for recovering from disasters caused
by mounting and operating a beta operating system on your computer.

Multibooting with Vista is different from multibooting with earlier editions
of Windows.

I suggest that you buy a large capacity external hard drive and back up your
production machine on it. That way you have your system backed up to medium
completely outside the machine and can recover from a disaster more easily.

Murphy was a beta tester. ;)
 
VistaBootPro is the classic example of why Microsoft should do a GUI version
of BCDedit and why those of us who have been screaming about the need for it
were 100% right.
 
Well, a GUI option will be available for the BCDEDIT, I just don't know
when.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
Lets certainly hope that isn't within the next 3 weeks!

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
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