Dual boot Vista with XP Pro?

[John]

A mate of mine bought Windows Vista (not sure which flavour) but doesn't
like it and has gone back to XP Pro. He's offered to sell it to me if I want
it but I don't know if I do. My own computer is running XP Pro on a SATA II
hard drive but I have a spare (IIRC) 60GB IDE hard drive lying around - can
I temporarily install Vista on that and dual-boot it with XP Pro for a week
or two to see if I like it? Are there any special considerations with a
dual-boot setup?

Cheers,

John.

 

[John Barnes]

If you are just planning to check it out for a short while, I would install
with only the IDE drive connected and that will give you the ability to
revert back easily. If you install it normally, you will end up with dual
boot, but the Windows XP boot will be overwritten. Done with the IDE only,
you can use boot priority in the BIOS to select which to run each boot. If
you have a modern BIOS that lets you select the boot drive with a function
key at boot, this is almost as easy as the boot menu.

 

[John]

If you are just planning to check it out for a short while, I would
install with only the IDE drive connected and that will give you the
ability to revert back easily. If you install it normally, you will end
up with dual boot, but the Windows XP boot will be overwritten. Done with
the IDE only, you can use boot priority in the BIOS to select which to run
each boot. If you have a modern BIOS that lets you select the boot drive
with a function key at boot, this is almost as easy as the boot menu.

Thanks for that John, that's what I'll do. I only have the one machine here
and don't want to risk overwriting the XP boot in case I don't like Vista.

Thanks mate