Suitable system for Vista?

[David Wilkinson]

Hi all:

I am planning to put together a multi-boot test machine (using BootIt or
Ranish for booting). The immediate purpose is to test my own software on
a variety of MS OS's (old and new), including Vista x86 and XP/Vista
x64. I will use a retail XP Pro x86 as the main OS, others just for
testing (MSDN downloads).

Requirements:

Support 64-bit OS's (XP, Vista beta)
Run Aero glass on Vista
Use two processors on multi-threaded programs
Burn .iso images on XP Pro x86
Boot from CD and DVD to load OS's

Proposed system:

Antec TX640B Black ATX Mid-tower case (400 W power supply)
Antec SmartFan 80mm Case Fan
ASUS A8N-E Athlon64 ATX Mbrd, Nforce4 Ultra chipset
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.2GHz, 512KBx2), Socket 939
1 GB PC3200 400MHz DDR RAM 184-pin
Western Digital 320 GB ATA100 IDE, 7200rpm, 8MB cache
256MB Radeon X1300 DDR PCI Express, TV Out & DVI
NEC 3550A Dual 16x DVD+RW/-RW/CD-RW (48x/32x/48x),16x DVD
3.5" floppy drive

I thought I would go with IDE drive to avoid any hassles with SATA
and/or RAID. I may use separate IDE drive for data.

Any comments/suggestions? This will be a custom-built machine, so
anything can be changed.

TIA,

David Wilkinson

 

[Fernando]

Very nice configuration. I suggest to go for 2 Gigs DDR. Also, you can
check for a system with the new Intel Core Duo 2 processor (more power
at the same price, but availability is the problem I guess)

David Wilkinson escribió:

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

Hide the system partitions from each other to eliminate any cross-over
issues. Unless you need to enter the other system partitions from XP. Just
a suggestion.

 

[Guest]

How do you hide the system partitions from each other?

 

[David Wilkinson]

How do you hide the system partitions from each other?

firth:

You need a third party boot manager to do this. But it makes things so
much better. It gets rid of the Vista boot screen, having Vista step on
XP's restore points, and all the difficulties of removing Vista.

Basically, when you select a given OS in the boot manager, the boot
manager re-writes the partition table in the MBR so that only the
system/boot partition of that OS appears (and perhaps a common data
partition). The system/boot partitions of the other OS's are not in the
partition table, and so are hidden. They appear as empty space on the disk.

At least this is how I understand it ...

David Wilkinson

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

I use BootMagic as a boot manager, and in the preferences for each system
partition I am able to choose which partitions are visible to that
particular O/S when it boots. BootMagic lives in the front of my hard drive
in a 50MB FAT16 partition and is the only visible partition when I turn the
computer on. Then it gives me the choice of which O/S I want to boot, and
makes whatever partitions available based on the preferences that I
previously mentioned.

BootMagic is one of the parts of PartitionMagic. I'm not sure if there are
any freeware boot managers that will accomplish the same thing, simply
because I haven't used any others.

Also, if you hide your XP partition when you install Vista, you don't get
the pathetic Vista boot manager messing around with your XP boot files.
Consequently, when you want to get rid of Vista, you don't have to mess
around with BCEdit; you simply delete the partition.

I also have a "Data" partition that is available from all O/S's that has
XP's "My Documents" et al.

Because of the reduction in headaches associated with multi-booting and the
fact that you can resize partitions without data loss, IMHO PatitionMagic is
worth the $70.00.

You can also boot from the PartitionMagic CD-ROM directly and access both
applications without having Windows running.

Mark

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

Actually they show up in XP's Disk Management as "Unknown" partitions in XP
but the file system is still recognized (as NTFS in the case with the Vista
partition). I can send a screen shot if you want to see how I have my
computer set-up.

 

[David Wilkinson]

Actually they show up in XP's Disk Management as "Unknown" partitions in XP
but the file system is still recognized (as NTFS in the case with the Vista
partition). I can send a screen shot if you want to see how I have my
computer set-up.

Mark:

I will have to believe you, beacuse my understanding is all theory,
based mostly on reading about Ranish Partition Manager in the
wonderfully entertaining and descriptive account to be found at

http://www.trombettworks.com/multi-boot.htm

But how does XP Disk Management display the hidden partitions? I thought
that Disk Management, or the more primitive fdisk of previous OS's, just
displayed and manipulated the partitions present in the MBR partition
table. To display hidden partitions not in the partition table, would
that not require a complete search of the entire disk? Only the boot
manager knows where all these partitions are (or the magic "paper" in
the above link).

But I guess it does not matter if Disk Management sees these partitions,
as long as the OS itself does not see them and assign drive letters to them.

David Wilkinson

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

I will have to believe you, beacuse my understanding is all theory, based
mostly on reading about Ranish Partition Manager in the wonderfully
entertaining and descriptive account to be found at

http://www.trombettworks.com/multi-boot.htm

But how does XP Disk Management display the hidden partitions? I thought
that Disk Management, or the more primitive fdisk of previous OS's, just
displayed and manipulated the partitions present in the MBR partition
table. To display hidden partitions not in the partition table, would that
not require a complete search of the entire disk? Only the boot manager
knows where all these partitions are (or the magic "paper" in the above
link).

But I guess it does not matter if Disk Management sees these partitions,
as long as the OS itself does not see them and assign drive letters to
them.

David Wilkinson

How XP's Disk Management sees the hidden partition has been a mystery to me
as well. I am not experienced or educated enough to figure it out, and,
like you point out, the O/S doesn't see it so it is not something I have
ever dwelled upon. It's more of a curiosity to me. In my particular
set-up, Vista's Disk Management also shows the XP partition as NTFS Unknown.
Even more curious, each also reports the correct size and free space of the
other. If somebody could explain the technical reason for this, I'm all
ears, er, eyes!