Ghosting Around with Xp and Vista :-)

[cheen]

Hello, I now have XP on my first partition and Vista on my second
parition...

can I ghost both OS as images and then place Vista on the first partition
and XP on the second one?
All this without destroying the apps that are installed on each OS?

I know how to ghost and put the os's back the only question is if changing
from parition 0 to 1 of XP and Vista from 1 to 0
will mess things up...

I can fix the bootloader with the vista boot dvd of course so thats not a
problem.

Some notes:

XP when it runs it "sees" its partion that is the first one as C
Vista when it runs it "Sees" its partiton that is the second one as C too

dont ask me why I want to do this, I just do! Any tips would be welcome

thanks

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You can also use VistaBoot Pro to manipulate the bootloader.

 

[Bob Harris]

Be aware that there are very many entires in the registry of XP and
separately in the registry for Vista that point to a drive location, such as
C:\...\...\. If you move the contents of the paritions in a way that
changes the drive letters, say C:\ to D:\, then one or both will not work.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Be aware that there are very many entires in the registry of XP and
separately in the registry for Vista that point to a drive location, such as
C:\...\...\. If you move the contents of the paritions in a way that changes
the drive letters, say C:\ to D:\, then one or both will not work.

At least for XP that is not true - probably not true for Vista as well.
What gets invalidated is the menu for the boot loader. For XP, this
menu is in the boot.ini file in which "partition()" is the parameter which
refers to the no. of the partition in which the OS resides, and "rdisk()"
is the parameter which designates the HD where that partition is.

Evidence that the letter name of the partition that the drive was
installed on does NOT matter is that I can clone a bootable XP from
any partition on any HD in my PC to any other partition on any other
HD in my PC, and as long as the entries in the boot menu that is in use
are correct, that cloned XP can be loaded and run exactly as its "parent"
XP. The letter name of the RUNNING XP clone will probably be
different from that of its "parent" XP, but that will not at be a problem.
The only problem that can occur involving partition letter names is if the
USER creates shortcuts which involve letter names to other partitions,
since those letter names will not be valid in the new partition arrangement.

*TimDaniels*

 

[On the Bridge]

Hello, Timothy, you seem you know very well what you are talking about..
thanks...

I want to ask you another detail... Vista somehow "sees" the second
partition as C because thats where its installed
and the first partition with XP, it sees as D,

and of course XP that is the first OS sees its own parition as C and the
Vista one as D

is there a way, after I ghost the XP image from the first partition and put
it on to the second parition for it to call the second partition
C and the first partition (that will now have vista) as D?
This is the behaviour of vista now.. so can this same behavior be done on
XP?

Sorry if this is kinda confusing.. I hope I expressed this question well
enough

 

[Timothy Daniels]

....Vista somehow "sees" the second partition as C because
thats where its installed and the first partition with XP, it sees
as D, and of course XP that is the first OS sees its own
parition as C and the Vista one as D

is there a way, after I ghost the XP image from the first
partition and put it on to the second parition for it to call
the second partition C and the first partition (that will now
have vista) as D?
This is the behaviour of vista now.. so can this same behavior
be done on XP?

The behavior that you describe for Vista is the same
behavior for XP - the OS will continue to refer to its own
partition by the same letter name that it had when it was
installed, and it will temporarily assign other letter names to
the other partitions that it sees. Just be careful about setting
up the boot menu, so that the correct partition is selected for
loading at boot time.

Also observe the standard procedure when making a
clone of WinNT/2K/XP. That is to not let it see its "parent"
OS when it (the clone) is started up for its first run. Once
the clone has been run once without seeing its "parent" OS,
it can thereafter see its "parent" with no problems.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

When you install a second OS on a computer it depends on how you install it
as to the drive lettering. If you booted the machine with the installation
media then the drive letters will not agree. If you start the second OS
installation from the desktop of the first they will agree.

Why are you trying to swap the OS's in the first place? Depending on what
you are trying to do, that may not be necessary.