Dual Boot Help

[Guest]

I have now downloaded the RC1 version of Vista, but am nervous of recurring
dual boot issues if I install on my home PC, as I did exactly this with the
Beta 2 release and although Vista worked fine I could not boot into "older
Windows" which was my XP Pro 32, I just got a black screen and nothing no
boot at all.

In the end last time I had to wipe the Vista Partition and then rebuild Xp
installation when Vista was gone (wouldn't work when Vista was still there).

I have four drives in 2 RAID0 arrays.

1st RAID0 is 2 x 74Gb Raptors that are partitioned as 100Gb for C: with XP
Pro and programmes. The rest of space is currently unallocated.

2nd RAID is 2 x 300Gb Diamond Max10 SATA Drives that have a 300Gb Partition
as a D: for files/pictures/downlaods etc. Rest of 300Gb is unallocated, but
has a partition of 50Gb that was my Vista Drive, but this is currently
unallocated.

If I resurrect this Vista Partition and again use it for a new install of
RC1, is there anything extra I should do to avoid a dual boot problem, as I
need XP Pro on this machine, but dearly want to play with Vista RC1 on this
machine.

MB is an A8N32 SLI Deluxe with nForce 4 chipset, so am using NVRAID for teh
two RAID arays.

Any advice or suggestions very welcome.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

not sure why it did not work last time. just make sure you are choosing
CUSTOM install and tell vista where to go, when it starts to load it will ask
you when to load the RAID drives at which point you would need to map them.
maybe do a GOOGLE search, there are alot of people running a similar setup.
i would change your title to this thread, too many threads in this place
with your exact title, and i think it will be mostly ignored, as this subject
of dual booting is very heavily addressed here. in your case you are really
asking about a RAID set up not so much as dual booting.

 

[Dennis Pack]

Ridesy:
With RC1 build 5600 there was a problem with the Nvidia raid drivers
and I was unable to install on a raid array. With RC1 build 5728 the Nvidia
raid drivers are included and function normally.

 

[Guest]

Dennis,

With the Beta2 install I had to get NVRAID drivers from Nvidia and loaded
these during install. Are you saying that with RC1 5728 these are included
within the install DVD?

Also my problem was not installing Vista so much as getting dual boot to
work, as XP refused to do anything loading Vista, but Vista Beta2 ran fine.

Rideys

 

[Dennis Pack]

Ridesy:
Nvidia raid drivers are included in 5728 x86 & x64. I've had no
problems setting up a dual boot automatically during installation. I use
VistaBootPro to change the names on each installation so that I don't get
lost. I currently can boot 3, 6 or 8 different operating system
configurations on 3 different computers. The major rule for multi-booting is
to install the oldest operating systems first and then in order of release.
I have to say that Vista is not to be installed on a production or only PC.
One problem could be that your Vista partition is after a data partition and
both arrays have to be visible for a dual boot to be built. My data drives
are the last partition on a hard drive or array. I'm using raid1 on 2 of the
3 computers that I'm multi-booting.

 

[Guest]

Dennis,

Thanks for help, but this dual boot stuff is pretty new to me, so can I just
check what you mean by making the data drives the last partition on drive or
array?

Are you meaning that in the Disc Management console I need to have the Vista
partition as the first (i.e. the one to the left most side) and then any
other partitions for future OS's, before then the final partition (the one
farthest to the right in view) being my data partition?

Does the designation of drive letters matter if partitioned from within Disc
Management, or do I let Vista/XP decide these?

I thought my last install of Beta2 had gone fine until I tried then boot to
the "old Windows" and it just wouldn't boot, or do anything.

Would vistabootpro help in this situation and do I install vistabootpro
after installing Vista, or from existing XP Pro installation?

Thanks again.

Ridesy

 

[Dennis Pack]

Ridesy:
From what I've seen the first partition on a hard drive or array has
to be an active operating system, not a data partition.
If you start the Vista installation from within XP the drive letters
will be the same as they are in XP. If you boot off the DVD the drive
letters will change. This has no effect on the function of the operating
systems. To avoid any confusion I label each partition after formatting it.
If you did an upgrade installation of Vista, you may have a line for
an earlier operating system but nothing will be there because it's been
overwritten. If the earlier operating system is still in another partition
VistaBootPro can help. There are other posts explaining how to do it but
I've never had to do it.