Re: Dual boot 32 and 64 bit vista

You can see if Vista Disk Management will allow you to shrink the current
IDE Master drive enough to add a second partition. You should have no
problem running both 32-bit and 64-bit side by side. If you can't get Vista
DM to shrink it you will need a Vista compatible partitioning software
program. Acronis and BootItNG are Vista ready. Many run into problems
later with partitions created using Partition Magic. It does not claim to
be Vista compatible and isn't.


"phatnutz" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> As the subject implies, I'm considering runing the 64 bit and 32 bit
> versions of vista side by side.
>
> Some of my hardware isn't supported in 64 bit, but I'd like to have the
> OS up and running so that I can eventually switch over to run 64 bit
> only.
>
> Licensing isn't an issue, as I have a 64 bit oem license installed, and
> a friend has a retail 32 bit license that he will trade me for some
> hardware. I don't want to give up around 200 bucks worth of good
> equipment if I'm not going to be able to do this, so guidance or
> opinions are welcomed.
>
> Here's some hardware info:
>
> AMD Athlon64 6400+
> 2 gig corsair ram
> Asus k8u-x
> 2 IDE hdd's
> 2 SATA drives (RAID possible, but just in SATA mode for now - 64
> doesn't even recognize the controller!)
>
> and software related:
> Vista64 installed on primary ISE Master, siingle partition covering the
> entire drive
>
> Can I put the 32 bit OS on the empty IDE drive, in it's own partition?
> Even better, could I halve the primary IDE master partition, and put
> 32bit and 64 in separate partitions on the same drive?
>
> It'd be good If I could leave that primary slave IDE drive available
> for both installs, since the 64 bit doesn't see my SATA controller and
> I'd need that second IDE drive as a shared location that both installs
> could access (mostly for media).
>
> Also, if no one can help me with this, can someone at least let me know
> how I'd go about salvaging the current 64 bit install if I hosed the
> bootloader? Maybe I can back up the MBR and restore it somehow from a
> boot disk? I have a nice usb boot drive that is 1 gig, so I can load
> all kinds of apps on it if necessary, and access them all from the
> command line if I need to save myself from myself.
>
>
> --
> phatnutz