How to dual boot Windows Vista Beta 2 and Windows XP

[Guest]

The hard disk on my PC consists of a 20 GB primary partition and the rest is
logical. Windows XP came preinstalled on my 20 GB primary partition. My aim
is to dual boot XP with Windows Vista Beta 2. I want to create another
separate primary partition for Vista Beta 2 and a additional partition or
logical drive for my data. Also, I want to be able to access my data from
both operating systems. I'm not too sure about doing this but I may attempt
to carry out this dual boot procedure using the steps below:

1. Using the Windows XP Disk Management tool under Computer Management, I
will right click the logical drive and space and select delete from the
context menu. This should convert this to free space.

2. Next, I would right click this unpartitioned or unallocated free space
and select New Partition from the context menu. From here, I would select a
primary partition, create a 30 GB size and format it using NTFS accordingly.
This partition or logical drive will be used to install Windows Vista Beta
2. More importantly, should I mark this partition as active ? or is not
necessary as Vista will sort this out during the actual installation of Vista
on this partition later on.

3. Then I would create a new logical drive for my data using the remaining
space.

4. Finally, I would restart the PC from my Windows Vista BETA 2 Installation
DVD, enter setup mode for that OS, and select the 30GB primary partition to
install Vista Beta 2.

Please note, I will not be using the Windows XP setup and fdisk tools to
partition my hard drive in this case as my PC came preinstalled with XP on a
customised 20 GB partition. Also, other third party software such as
Partition Magic are not available to me.

Please correct me if the above steps are incorrect as I'm not too sure how
to employ this dual boot procedure. I'm not sure whether to make the Vista
partition active or not in step 2 above before proceeding with the
installation of Vista at step 4. At completion, I would like to be able to
choose which OS to boot from at PC startup when presented with the boot
manager loader menu. Lastly, is it possible to change order of the boot menu
using Vista's BCD (Boot Configuration Data) menu which is the equivalent of
XP's Boot.ini file.

I would welcome any assistance from anybody out there.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[AJR]

Martin - Just a few comments - I am sure you will receive more specific
responses. However to format a drive properly you should understand the
differences between active, primary, extended and logical partitions (not
including FAT or NTFS file systems);
An OS cannot be installed on a logical (not active) partition - data can.
In a dual boot scenario (other than server based) you can access data via
both OSs but it requires applications that use the data to be installed on
both OSs.

I have not evaluated your proposed procedure - my recommendation would to
install another hard drive.

 

[andy]

The hard disk on my PC consists of a 20 GB primary partition and the rest is
logical. Windows XP came preinstalled on my 20 GB primary partition. My aim
is to dual boot XP with Windows Vista Beta 2. I want to create another
separate primary partition for Vista Beta 2 and a additional partition or
logical drive for my data. Also, I want to be able to access my data from
both operating systems. I'm not too sure about doing this but I may attempt
to carry out this dual boot procedure using the steps below:

1. Using the Windows XP Disk Management tool under Computer Management, I
will right click the logical drive and space and select delete from the
context menu. This should convert this to free space.

2. Next, I would right click this unpartitioned or unallocated free space
and select New Partition from the context menu. From here, I would select a
primary partition, create a 30 GB size and format it using NTFS accordingly.
This partition or logical drive will be used to install Windows Vista Beta
2. More importantly, should I mark this partition as active ? or is not
necessary as Vista will sort this out during the actual installation of Vista
on this partition later on.

If you make the new primary partition active, you won't get dual
booting.

If your desire is for Vista to not change in any way the Windows XP
partition, then you could make the new Vista partition active. But in
order to get dual booting, you must first enable booting to Windows XP
from the new active primary partition before installing Vista.

 

[andy]

Martin - Just a few comments - I am sure you will receive more specific
responses. However to format a drive properly you should understand the
differences between active, primary, extended and logical partitions (not
including FAT or NTFS file systems);

An OS cannot be installed on a logical (not active) partition - data can.

Windows can most certainly be installed in logical partitions.

 

[AJR]

Windows must be setup on an "active" partition - you cannot designate a
logical partition as "active".

 

[andy]

Windows must be setup on an "active" partition - you cannot designate a
logical partition as "active".

The only requirement when installing Windows is that there is a
bootable (meaning that the BIOS is set to boot from that disk drive)
active primary partition where the boot files are stored. Windows
itself can be installed in that same partition or in any other
partition on that disk or on another disk..

 

[Guest]

Andy,

My aplologies for the late reply but I was away from my PC for a few days
but many thanks for replying. I must agree with your comments made on dual
booting with reference to: "If you make the new primary partition active, you
won't get dual
booting". There is a good chance that if I made the Vista primary
partition active, the computer would boot every time to Vista and I wouldn't
be able to switch to Windows XP as the Windows Boot Manager loader OS menu
would not be available. Of course, I could use the FDISK utility to make XP
the active partition instead in order to switch back to this OS but this
situation would be very inconvenient for swapping. It was actually a member
of the XP newsgroup that advised me to make the Vista partition active but I
must admit I had my doubts about it. At this stage, I'm going to use the
Disk Management utility in XP or Windows XP setup to create a second primary
partition for Vista. Then, I'm going to use the Windows Vista installation
setup to install Vista on this newly created partition and allow it to format
it by NTFS. The only outstanding query or doubt that I have is that I always
thought that a system partition was required in a startup config. Microsoft
refer to this system partition as a primary partition that is made active so
that you can boot to it. Also, they can only be one system partition. If I
go ahead with this dual boot procedure, my system won't have a system
partition but hopefully it will function as it will have two primary
partitions comprising of XP and Vista. Finally, I have included a web
article on dual booting XP and Vista Beta 2 @
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php.
It's okay but it uses a third party partitioning utility called Partition
Magic. But at least it doesn't mention that you have to make one of the
partitions active.

I would welcome any other comments.

Thanks

Martin

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your comments. I might consider installing Vista Beta 2 on a
separate hard disk as the code in this OS may not be fully stable. However,
I feel that I should still be able to dual boot Vista Beta 2 and XP on the
one HD. Having read other posts, I'm not going to make the Vista primary
partition active as it might not allow me to dual boot OSs. The only doubt
or confusion I have left is that I read in some Microsoft article that a
system partition is required in a PC startup. Microsoft refers to this as a
primary partition that is make active in which you can boot to. However, if
I go ahead with my dual boot strategy, I won't have any system partition as
none of the primary partions will be made active in order for it to work
properly. I have included a dual booting link @
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php.
It's not great but it is ok. It uses the third party PM software. However,
it mentions nothing about making one of the primary partitions active which
is good.

Anyway, any other suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[andy]

Andy,

My aplologies for the late reply but I was away from my PC for a few days
but many thanks for replying. I must agree with your comments made on dual
booting with reference to: "If you make the new primary partition active, you
won't get dual
booting". There is a good chance that if I made the Vista primary
partition active, the computer would boot every time to Vista and I wouldn't
be able to switch to Windows XP as the Windows Boot Manager loader OS menu
would not be available. Of course, I could use the FDISK utility to make XP
the active partition instead in order to switch back to this OS but this
situation would be very inconvenient for swapping. It was actually a member
of the XP newsgroup that advised me to make the Vista partition active but I
must admit I had my doubts about it. At this stage, I'm going to use the
Disk Management utility in XP or Windows XP setup to create a second primary
partition for Vista. Then, I'm going to use the Windows Vista installation
setup to install Vista on this newly created partition and allow it to format
it by NTFS. The only outstanding query or doubt that I have is that I always
thought that a system partition was required in a startup config. Microsoft
refer to this system partition as a primary partition that is made active so
that you can boot to it. Also, they can only be one system partition. If I
go ahead with this dual boot procedure, my system won't have a system
partition but hopefully it will function as it will have two primary
partitions comprising of XP and Vista.

If your computer has no system partition, then you won't be able to
boot to any operating system. As long as you can still boot Windows
XP, the system partition remains the Windows XP partition. When you
install Vista, the Windows XP partition will be modified by the Vista
setup program, adding whatever files it needs to boot Vista.

Finally, I have included a web
article on dual booting XP and Vista Beta 2 @
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php.
It's okay but it uses a third party partitioning utility called Partition
Magic. But at least it doesn't mention that you have to make one of the
partitions active.

That's because the C: partition remained the active partition.
Partition Magic has the ability to make primary partitions active or
inactive.
The only reason he had to use Partition Magic is because only one
partition was available for Vista installation, the C: partition.
Vista won't install in a FAT32 partition.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for submitting the web link on VistaBootPro for editing the BCD @
http://tinyurl.com/hj94q as it is very helpful.

Thanks Again

Martin

 

[Guest]

Andy,

Thanks for your comments on
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php and all your assistance to this issue.