Vista and XP on same machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ivan Vegvary
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Ivan Vegvary

Bought a new Gateway w/ AMD triple core processor and 6 gigs of memory. 500
gig hard drive with Vista home premium installed.

Because of some legacy programs that I don't want upgrade (e.g. Autodesk
Land Development 2005) I am curious about the following:

Can I simply install my XP hard drive into the computer, and, upon bootup
push the F10 button and request a boot from the XP drive. Said drive has
the Autodesk program and the drivers for the HP Design Jet 600 Plotter.
Seems so much simpler than keeping two machines around. I would only need
to boot from the XP drive about once or twice a month. BTW, there are no
drivers available for the HP plotter running on Vista.

Has anybody done this? There is some talk about dual boot from the same
hard drive, but, why not simply install a second drive with a different
operating system?

Thanks for all advice,

Ivan Vegvary
 
You can certainly have XP on one hard drive and Vista on the other, and
switch between the two in the manner you suggest BUT ...

... XP would need to be re-installed onto the second drive on the new
computer, due to the different hardware setup. Merely transferring it from
one computer to another wouldn't be sufficient to be able to also boot from
it.
 
You can certainly have XP on one hard drive and Vista on the other,
and switch between the two in the manner you suggest BUT ...

.. XP would need to be re-installed onto the second drive on the new
computer, due to the different hardware setup. Merely transferring it
from one computer to another wouldn't be sufficient to be able to also
boot from it.
Click to expand...

Just setup a virtual machine.
 
Bought a new Gateway w/ AMD triple core processor and 6 gigs of memory.  500
gig hard drive with Vista home premium installed.

Because of some legacy programs that I don't want upgrade (e.g. Autodesk
Land Development 2005) I am curious about the following:

Can I simply install my XP hard drive into the computer, and, upon bootup
push the F10 button and request a boot from the XP drive.  Said drive has
the Autodesk program and the drivers for the HP Design Jet 600 Plotter.
Seems so much simpler than keeping two machines around.  I would only need
to boot from the XP drive about once or twice a month.  BTW, there are no
drivers available for the HP plotter running on Vista.

Has anybody done this?  There is some talk about dual boot from the same
hard drive, but, why not simply install a second drive with a different
operating system?

Thanks for all advice,

Ivan Vegvary
Click to expand...

If you're are going to do this, make sure that you install XP 'after'
installing Vista, since Vista uses a different boot-loader which is
incompatible with the Windows XP version.

There are a couple of detailed walk-throughs on google on how to do
this.

Likewise, I'd go with the other suggestions offered here, i.e. install
a VM :)

Stefan
 
I agree with Tree*Rat: don't mess about with dual booting just for a few
legacy programs. It's a damn nuisance having to reboot whenever you want to
run one.

Get yourself a copy of Microsoft Virtual PC, Sun VirtualBox, or VMWare
Virtual Server - all of which are free - and install XP into a virtual
machine. That way you can run your legacy programs within your normal Vista
environment.

The only issue might be the interface to your plotter. If it's USB, then
look carefully at the USB support in the virtualisation host.

SteveT
 
That sounds do-able.
Try it.

But there might be a problem: only one OS partition at a time can be
active. To boot from your XP drive, you would need to set it active
before booting to it, and set the Vista partition inactive (i.e.,
"Hide" the partition). Whether your hardware boot program will do
this or not is unknown to us.

My advice is to:
1) Install your XP disk as First Master, and do a repair installation
of XP, since you will need to reset the XP registry with the correct
hardware information. This may or may not be possible. IF not, you
will HAVE to reinstall XP and ancillary programs. You will probably
have to also reinstall Autodesk. If it may be reinstalled on top of
itself, you will save your data, also. Otherwise, you will have to
back up this data on an external source before reinstalling Autodesk.
2) Install Vista on your newer HD (as Master -- i.e., on its own
motherboard connector) as the second OS, which will give you a
dual-boot menu. This is why I love SATA drives. Each drive has its
own MB connection.

But it must be done in that order, first XP, then Vista -- i.e.,
install Vista AFTER you have your XP booting properly.

BTW, your problem has a perfect solution: It's called "Dual-booting",
which DOESN'T have to be from the same HD..

Because its not that "simple". You can't just take a system drive out
of one machine and put it in a newer one without resetting the
registry to reflect the new machine realities.
If you're are going to do this, make sure that you install XP 'after'
installing Vista, since Vista uses a different boot-loader which is
incompatible with the Windows XP version.
Click to expand...

You got that backward, friend.

ALWAYS install oldest OS FIRST, then newer OSes. This is the
Microsoft-approved way, and the only way one can get a dual-boot menu
without installing third-party tools. Additionally, the older OS
should be on the FIRST DRIVE, though it's not necessary (but
advisable).
There are a couple of detailed walk-throughs on google on how to do
this.

Likewise, I'd go with the other suggestions offered here, i.e. install
a VM :)
Click to expand...

That would be great ONLY if the VM allows the virtualization of his
drivers. Otherwise he would be dead in the water.
 
Contrary to what others are saying here, you can have both XP and Vista on
the same computer, even on the same partition if you want. But I highly
reccomend making a seperate partition for XP rather than sharing the two.
That goes for any other OS as well, its just safer.

The best way to do this woudl be to create the partitions, 70 megs each is
more than adequate but you can split it in two if thats easier. Then load XP
onto one of the partitions. After that load Vista, and choose the remaining
partition. Once Vista is installed, when you boot the computer you'll get a
nice little menu that will let you choose which OS to start.

Paragon can resize the partitions without any data loss if you want to leave
Vista intact and create a new partition
for XP. And I'm not sure (because i've never tried this) but Xp might create
the boot menu too if you install it
after Vista on another partition. I do know that if have two drives with
different versions of XP on them ( I have both Pro and home on one computer)
XP will see this and give you a boot menu on start up.

Virtual PC is ok but it's very limited and slow as hell. I use it only to
test programs, and even then it often doesn't work as well as you want.

Hope this is helpful
 
I would not usually agree with the people in here that propose using a
virtual machine, because it would be slow..
Click to expand...

Actually, I haven't found that. If you've got hardware virtualisation
support in the BIOS, and it's switched on, you probably wouldn't notice a
difference.

SteveT
 
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