XP and Vista problem

[Barry]

Our computer Club has an aging Sony Vaio laptop with XP Pro.After Windows
Vista is released on January 30, 2007, we will face a dilemma. At some
point, users will be moving toward Vista but many will stick with XP and we
have the obligation to present the old and the new OSs to the membership.

We can either buy a new Premium Ready lzptop with an upgrade coupon or buy a
new laptop with Vista preinstalled. The latter will be more expensive and we
have a limited budget.
My plan is to load the XP and Vista OSs on separate hard drives and swap
them out as reuired. I would remove the screws to the hard drive panel and
swap them if I could find a compatible caddy or frame such as exists in
desktop models which have removable drives.

Can Vista boot from an external drive?

Do you agree with this or do you foresee major problems? . I would
appreciate
any comments. Happy New Year.

Barry

 

[philo]

..

Can Vista boot from an external drive?

It's nothing to do with the OS...
It's a matter of whether or not the bios can be set to boot from an external
drive.

Heck...all you have to do is setup a drive with two partitions...
install XP on one, Vista on the other and dual boot

 

[Mark Rae]

Do you agree with this

Can't understand why you're even bothering with this...

1) Install Vista
2) Install VirtualPC 2007
3) Create a WinXP guest

Or, if RAM is *really* tight:

1) Partition the hard disk into two
2) Install WinXP on the first partition
3) Install Vista on the second partition

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

If the laptop does not have an ExpressCard34 slot (aging Sony Vaio's don't)
then you cannot boot off of an external drive. This is the second time you
have posted this. Please give the specs or at least the model number of the
computer. I suspect it might not even be able to run Vista.

 

[Guest]

you can also dual boot using 2 different hard drives, but only on internal
drives.

It will not work external (USB) drives. You can not even get it to install.

I have XP on one hard drive and Vista on the other.

 

[Michael Jennings]

OP states they're getting a new laptop. Question is, get the XP w/coupon,
or preinstalled Vista; stating that XP w/coupon would be less expensive and
maybe jiggerable, so that users could run either XP or Vista somehow.

He doesn't say what happens to the Vaio. Q: will it work & what is best.

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

We can either buy a new Premium Ready lzptop with an upgrade coupon or buy a
new laptop with Vista preinstalled. The latter will be more expensive and we
have a limited budget.

Why will the latter be more expensive? Vista costs the same as XP does,
except for the premium version, which you probably won't need.

My plan is to load the XP and Vista OSs on separate hard drives and swap
them out as reuired. I would remove the screws to the hard drive panel and
swap them if I could find a compatible caddy or frame such as exists in
desktop models which have removable drives.

Why not just repartition the computer into to partitions and boot XP on one
and Vista on the other?

Can Vista boot from an external drive?

If the computer can boot from an external drive.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I don't see why a preinstalled Vista would be more expensive than a
preinstalled XP, with or without a coupon. All he has to do is wait for Jan
30.

 

[Michael Jennings]

They hardly have any money. Until the club members are willing
to rectify this situation, they need to accept not upgrading to Vista.

The coupon isn't for two operating systems - it would not be a way
legitimately to boot either XP or Vista. On the other hand, if it turns
out they hate Vista, the coupon deal should let them restore XP, but
the clock is ticking - no coupons after 3/15 and redeem by 3/31.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

In the OP, the poster states, "We can either buy a new Premium Ready lzptop
with an upgrade coupon or buy a
new laptop with Vista preinstalled. The latter will be more expensive and we
have a limited budget."

I am saying that the latter will NOT be more expensive. It should be the
same so why mess with the coupon?

 

[Michael Jennings]

To obtain the right to revert to XP, which I presume they get. I believe that
Barry is thinking that they can run either XP or Vista - two for the price of
one - that bit about removing the screws to facilitate hard drive swaps. My
estimate is that Windows would complain about "Genuine" in that case.

As with many cases in the newsgroup, an instrument of psychic vision is
required to supply missing information. The scene my crystal ball shows me
is two boys and a laptop. Barry needs a good argument to replace the laptop.

Let's say Barry's brainstorm is a go - they get a new laptop - but they hate
WinMail. Although the old laptop's gone, it's not a total bust - they can revert
to Outlook Express if they did the coupon. Otherwise they're stuck.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I don't see mechanically swapping drives as a barrier. Vista will not complain about genuiness in such a case. I do suspect that Vista simply is not an option on the old laptop. Even if the hard drive had the capacity and by some miracle it had enough memory, the graphics adaptor may not have a driver compatible with Vista at all. And then there are the mobo drivers and utilities. It depends on how old this thing is and the OP never would divulge that.
To obtain the right to revert to XP, which I presume they get. I believe that
Barry is thinking that they can run either XP or Vista - two for the price of
one - that bit about removing the screws to facilitate hard drive swaps. My
estimate is that Windows would complain about "Genuine" in that case.

As with many cases in the newsgroup, an instrument of psychic vision is
required to supply missing information. The scene my crystal ball shows me
is two boys and a laptop. Barry needs a good argument to replace the laptop.

Let's say Barry's brainstorm is a go - they get a new laptop - but they hate
WinMail. Although the old laptop's gone, it's not a total bust - they can revert
to Outlook Express if they did the coupon. Otherwise they're stuck.

 

[Michael Jennings]

In that case, Barry should get his club to ditch the old laptop and get
a new one, as that's the only way likely to boot up Vista. The doability of
perverting the coupon into *also* being able to boot up XP is a question.
I suspect that Microsoft has outthought them on that one.

I don't see mechanically swapping drives as a barrier. Vista will not
complain about genuiness in such a case. I do suspect that Vista simply
is not an option on the old laptop. Even if the hard drive had the capacity
and by some miracle it had enough memory, the graphics adaptor may
not have a driver compatible with Vista at all. And then there are the
mobo drivers and utilities. It depends on how old this thing is and the
OP never would divulge that.

To obtain the right to revert to XP, which I presume they get. I believe that
Barry is thinking that they can run either XP or Vista - two for the price of
one - that bit about removing the screws to facilitate hard drive swaps. My
estimate is that Windows would complain about "Genuine" in that case.

As with many cases in the newsgroup, an instrument of psychic vision is
required to supply missing information. The scene my crystal ball shows me
is two boys and a laptop. Barry needs a good argument to replace the laptop.

Let's say Barry's brainstorm is a go - they get a new laptop - but they hate
WinMail. Although the old laptop's gone, it's not a total bust - they can revert
to Outlook Express if they did the coupon. Otherwise they're stuck.

 

[Barry]

Thanks everyone for your input. I don't like the dual boot option- if
the computer crashes it takes both Os's with it. I think the external drive
idea may have merit if I can find a laptop with a BIOS that will allow that
boot. We'll have to put our old Sony Vaio PCG-F490 into mothballs or use it
in tandem with a new Vista laptop or a new Premium Ready XP Pro laptop that
has been upgraded to Vista Home Premium with a coupon before 3/15/07.
I'm still looking for a solution to this mess. Could a laptop be custom
built from Dell or HP, for example, with dual SATA HDs or a SATA drive with
a swappable frame?
Thanks again.
Barry

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You may not need a swappable frame. All of the laptops coming out these
days appear to have an ExpressCard/34 slot. The interface connects to the
PCI bus and so should be bootable. There are a couple of eSATA
ExpressCard/34 eSATA port cards that should support booting from a SATA
drive in an eSATA enclosure connected this way. I used external SATA drives
with my test box (tower) as boot devices all during the Vista beta testing.
The throughput of drives connected this way is often higher than the
internal drives.

I don't think I would bother with the XP pro at all. I would just wait
until Jan 30 and order a new laptop with Vista preinstalled. The coupon
thing is just to sell hardware during this interim period while Vista cannot
yet be ordered preinstalled. Laptop pricing will be the same whether you
get XP and a coupon or Vista by itself. Also, you will have Vista up and
running on the machine sooner than the Mid-March delivery date for Vista
when obtained via the coupons.

 

[Guest]

Barry your fears of dual boot are unfounded. This thread should have gone
no further than PARTITTION INSTALL BOTH AND DUAL BOOT If you get problems
with an OS you can reformat that partition and reinstall leaving the other
partition and OS untouched Problem??????