TWO OS/ Partitions other than C:\

[Brahman]

Have XP Pro installed on a Raid 0 pair of samsug hd.During installation
created a partitions of 15gb C:\ System, f 40gb D:\ Programs and a third
70gb E:\ Data unassigned 140gb.
Because the C:\ has turned out to be too small and causes XP problems -
cannot expand C:\, therefore not practical to conduct a upgrade.
Plan to install a new Sumsung 1Tb ( faster) Hd and install Vista Ultimate
on that disc.
2 questions,-
1.0 The pros and cons of partitioning the new HD i.e. F:\ G:\?
2.0 Any problems associated with keeping Xp installed with Vista installed
Under NT could mod boot .init - does Vista have an equilvant?
Thanks

 

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

I'm not MS certified, so take my observations with a grain of salt.

Have XP Pro installed on a Raid 0 pair of samsug hd.During installation
created a partitions of 15gb C:\ System, f 40gb D:\ Programs and a third
70gb E:\ Data unassigned 140gb.

Sounds fairly optimal... although I've never had issues with installing
programs on C: with Windows XP (or Pro). There was a time when
98SE and 2K were used for running high powered graphics rendering
and CPU intensive audio programs, that often a recommendation to
install software on a separate partition was a short-term remedy for
some issues. Personally, I never encountered those issues. If C:
were ever corrupted, the software would still require reinstallation,
thus the dedicated programs drive was fairly meaningless unless
you had full program installs resting there with no hard copies on CD.

Because the C:\ has turned out to be too small and causes XP problems -

I don't buy this at all. You have other 'issues'. I run XP Pro on three laptops,
doing serious graphics on one and audio on the other two. Both C: drives
are 8 Gig and all data resides on another drive(s). My XP Pro tower has
a 15Gig C: for OS and software, and a 60 Gig D: for Data. C: has never
exceeded about 60% of capacity and ocassionally I let My Documents
become fairly bloated before backing up and deleting.

You are likely seeing a System Restore issue. The default setting for 'sys
restore' is to allocate 15% of your C: drive space for restore points. May
I suggest that you turn off system restore, thereby eliminating some 3.5 Gig
of superfluous clog, and reboot the system. Return to System restore,
reactivate, and create a new restore point. Defragment the drive and
schedule a disk check, reboot and let the check run at startup. Then,
set system restore preferences to use only about 5% of your C: for
saved points.

cannot expand C:\, therefore not practical to conduct a upgrade.

Sure you can expand C:. Combine it with D:. (I recommend Partition Magic 8).
When you do this, everything that was on the drive letter D: can be saved on
the new, larger C: within it's own newly created file folder.

However, I see no reason that the physical size of C: should be any issue
at all for XP given your explanation. If the OS and necessary plug-ins is all
you have installed on your C: drive, you should have some 50% free space.

You could then actually split off a piece of your current E: (future D in order
to hold your programs if you felt the need.

How about RAM? You may have a page file issue. A perfectly clean install
of XP will require some 140 meg of ram just to keep the system open. If
you have any software oriented processes that startup with the boot and
run in the background, you could actually be exceeding your available ram
just to keep the system up and running. BS software like messenger
services, music sharing or downloading services (Limewire, Bear, etc.)
will eat your ram for lunch resulting in constant use of the page file and
dramatically slowing your PC.

Plan to install a new Sumsung 1Tb ( faster) Hd and install Vista Ultimate
on that disc.

Please research this carefully before committing.

2 questions,-
1.0 The pros and cons of partitioning the new HD i.e. F:\ G:\?
2.0 Any problems associated with keeping Xp installed with Vista installed
Under NT could mod boot .init - does Vista have an equilvant?
Thanks

Too many possible answers.....

Do an advanced Google Groups search on this group using your choice
of questions. You will find lots of resources for dual boot set-ups, and
literally thousands of posts that are serious heartbreakers regarding trying
to dual boot *anything* with Vista. The only solution seems to be running
"Virtual PC" and loading the desired OS inside of VISTA. Vista doesn't seem
to play very nicely with anything else.

I usually recommend installing a removable drive bay and loading the drive
with the OS you desire to use at the time. A second DATA drive can always
remain in place for both OSes.

I believe you simply have some optimization issues and some registry
bloat. And though I know you're ready to take the Vista plunge, I also
think you should read some of the posting history on the MS Vista
news groups before you open up a can of worms that will give you far
more headache than taking the time to optimize your XP box. If you
are extremely comfortable with XP, you will not be easily impressed
by the Vista OS.

Vista has a proprietary partitioning system, it's own odd-ball boot record,
and eats XP restore points for lunch if on the same drive, just to mention
a few things. If you install as an upgrade, your XP license is permanently
removed. There are a mountain of issues (not insurmountable, however)
with Windows Vista, period. On a personal note, I've been through two
versions of Vista Home, now -Basic and Premium- using them for my
own familiarization and optimization experiments, before giving both of
them away with new computer builds for clients.

Cheers,

DM



--
David Morgan (MAMS)
Morgan Audio Media Service
http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com
Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901
_____________________________
http://www.januarysound.com

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Brahman.

See the responses to your identical post in the OTHER newsgroup.

On those rare occasions when you MUST post the same message to multiple NGs,
please crosspost, rather than multi-post.

That is, put all the NG addresses into a single message. That way, the
message will appear in all the groups, and all the responses will be in a
single coherent thread, rather than several disjointed discussions. Each
responder can see the other comments and not duplicate what has already been
said. The payoff for you is that you won't have to visit each of those NGs
to get all the responses.

Also, it's rarely necessary to post the same question six minutes later.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Brahman]

Thanks R.C. White - this was my first post and I apologize for the dual post
issue you raise - I actually had second thoughts on the appropriate group. I
have a Intel D975XBX board, Intel 930, 2Gb OCZ and 2 Sumsung HD16JJ
configured as Intel Raid 0 which I put together summer 06 with idea of
adopting the new OS standard after the first SP which was just released. I
run Office 03,Visual Studio 05, SQL Server 05 etc but discovered that 64
compatible has Architecture X32. I reviewed the Intel Search (board/OS). It
seems that available downloads limit Vista versions on my board. I wonder if
the D975XBX2 is only necessary to support Aero.

You are running Vista Ultimate 64. What board and processor are you using?
When I assembled the system I thought I had expasion capabilty to run Vista
Ultimate 64 and 64 applications by a simple processor update - but it looks
like I was uninformed.

 

[Brahman]

David thanks for the reply.
My C:\ partition15gb has 14gb after moving Documents and Settings to the
Data partition and after running disc cleaup and using compression. I cannot
run a proper defragmentation with 7% free space. I am running Office, Visual
Studio, SQL Server etc installed on partition D;\ but these still add links
etc in C:\

I appreciate your suggestion about Restore. I will try.

I assembled an Antec case an PS, Intel D975XBX, 930, OCZ 2Gb, dual Samsung
HD160JJ system summer 06 and loaded XP Pro and applications.

Computer Management/Disk Management/Help/How To/Manage basic disk
volumes/extend basic volumes - states "You cannot extend the current system
or boot partitions"

This seems to force me to do a new install of XP Pro- reformat then change
partitions to create a much larger System partition ( My documents and
setting alone are greater than 5Gb)
Since this means reinstalling all my applications I thought I might as well
install Vista since I will have to sooner or later.

I also appreciate your dual boot suggestions.
(In the distant past when NT was going through many revisions I had 4 or 5
OS configurations loaded on a HP and DEC workstations and used the boot .ini
file to manage them in a DOS partition. After installing XP Pro there was no
need for backup OS's)
I have never run "Virtual PC". From your comments it sound like I would have
to do a new installation of XP. Is there a good reference?

I was hoping to install Vista on the new HD and have it isolated from the XP
installation and the Vista drivers would be installed on the new disc.
This would allow me to keep working with XP and applications and gradually
migrate to Vista ( after running your Restore solution for XP).
I do not know how to control which OS will boot?
I spend my time now on my applications so I am not up to speed on OS issues.
Does Vista have a boot file and is it compatable with the XP boot?
Thanks for yur help.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Brahman.

After reading this latest post and the one in the other sub-thread, it's
obvious that you have a lot more dual-booting experience than I realized.
;^}

I'm a one-man one-computer kind of guy, so I don't get to see many
motherboards and CPUs. My last 3 rigs have been EPoX mobos and AMD CPUs.
To celebrate the RTM of Vista I got an EPoX MF570sli (AM2 socket) and AMD
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ with 2 GB OCZ PC-6400 RAM (and added another 2 GB last
week) with an ATI X1600 Pro graphics card. As the model number suggests,
this mobo uses the nVidia nForce 570 chipset. After some hard-drive trauma
in 2006, I ended up with 4 SATA II HDDs. The first 2 are Maxtor 120 & 200
GB; the 3rd & 4th are identical 300 GB Seagates as my first RAID, a RAID 1
mirror. Now that the Vista beta has ended, I don't need so many partitions
and I have more disk space than I need, but it's nice to have all that elbow
room.

Early in the Vista beta, I installed it into 10 GB logical drives, but later
betas got bigger and I had to use 15 GB and then 20 GB. My Vista Ultimate
x64 RTM started out at 20 GB, but it grew in spite of my efforts to put the
page file, WM (and WLM) message store, most of my photos and other data, and
a lot of other stuff somewhere else. After my latest shuffling, my Drive C:
(second volume on the second HD) is now 60 GB; about 18 GB of it is still
free.

In your other post you said:

Computer Management/Disk Management/Help/How To/Manage basic disk

volumes/extend basic volumes - states "You cannot extend the current system
or boot partitions"

Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) has been one of my favorite utilities ever
since it appeared in Win2K nearly 8 years ago. It got better in WinXP and
still more capable in Vista. Now it will shrink volumes, and expand them,
even into non-contiguous free space except for system and boot volumes. It
DID extend my Drive C: into contiguous free space. WinXP can't shrink and
expand volumes. But the DiskPart.exe shell (run in a Command Prompt window)
can do that, and some other jobs that DM cannot, in both XP and Vista. For
example, DM insists on creating the first 3 partitions as primary
partitions, then creates the 4th one as a logical drive in an
automatically-created extended partition. To get my favorite pattern of a
single primary followed by an extended partition covering the rest of the
drive, I had to use DiskPart.

Does Vista have a boot file and is it compatable with the XP boot?

Vista uses a new startup system called BCD (Boot Configuration Data), which
I won't try to explain in detail here. To dual-boot Vista/WinXP, you still
need the WinXP startup files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) in the
System Partition. BCD ignores those files unless you choose "Previous
operating system" from the opening menu, in which case it forgets about
Vista, steps out of the way, loads the WinXP files and presents the familiar
Boot.ini menu. That's why I agreed with dzomlija's suggestion to not create
a true dual-boot, but to put only Vista on your new HD and leave WinXP on
the old one, installed as the second HD, and switch the BIOS to boot from
the second HD when you want to run WinXP.

Another thing that's different in Vista Setup is assignment of drive
letters. If you boot from the Vista DVD to run Setup, it will assign the
letter C: to its boot volume, which may not be the same as the System
Partition - which will then have to get a different letter, probably D:.
These letters apply only during the Vista session, of course, and probably
will not be the same as during a WinXP session. If you want consistent
letters, you have to boot into WinXP and run Vista Setup from inside WinXP -
which may not be feasible in your situation - so that Vista Setup can see
and "inherit" the letters that WinXP has assigned.

There's lots more, but this post is already too long, so I'll stop here.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Brahman]

RC
Thanks - there is a lot there.
I need time to let it sink in.
You have cast some light on the Way.