tips for dual boot with XP on laptop?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Mgr
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob Mgr

I have a new Dell D830 laptop with Vista Ultimate and I have taken the XP
hard drive from my old D820 and put it in the new laptop and it works great
after a couple driver updates.

So now I'm thinking of going dual boot and here is my approach:

Use Ghost 2003 to copy my current XP install to a new 160GB hard drive and
keep the target partition small, maybe 60GB. Make sure XP is running OK and
then insert the Vista Ultimate CD and install.

What do I have to watch out for with this method? Is there a better way?

Should I bother keeping the partitions separate? Seems like a good idea but
maybe there are some gotchas.

Is there any compatibility with XP seeing the Vista files or vice-versa?
Both would be NTFS so I expect not but you never know with MS.

I'm thinking of loading Vista 64bit version since I've got 4GB of RAM....
any issues with XP and Vista 64-bit on the same machine?

Many thanks for any tips you can share.

Bob
 
Personally I have not done this before but here is what I would do:

1. Create 2 different partitions (C,D)
2. Copy the image of XP to partition C, verify it works then ...
3. Install Vista, make sure to install it partition d
4. I would have the partitions both setup as NTFS
5. I am not 100% sure but I think you will need to have 64 bit hardware to
install 64 bit Vista as well as 64 bit XP.

After that has been done, you should be able to choose your profile upon
startup to select either XP or Vista.

I like having two different partitions to keep everything clean.

You don't really have much to lose since you still have your other hard
drive, one of these days I would like to do the samething myself.

Hopefully this helps,
 
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