Vista Pre-install questions

[Gary Miller]

I will be wanting to install my MSDN Vista RTM on a new
computer arriving with MCE preinstalled. I plan on doing a
dual boot installation at the get go and have a couple of
questions to make sure that I do this most efficiently.

1) I will want to install the 64 bit version of Vista (Core
2 Duo processor should support both x64 and x86) . Am I
correct that I should probably create a second partition
before the install and then boot from the DVD and specify
this second primary partition as the install drive vs
creating the Vista partition during the setup routine? Am I
correct that the original OS should remain on the original
C: and let Vista go to the next one up the chain?

2) What would the ideal partition sizes be if I had one for
the original XP, a second for Vista 64 and then a third for
data. I have read quite a bit about 20 gigs minimum, but
what would be ideal for the operating systems to use?

3) What is needed to tell both XP and Vista to default to
the third partition for My Documents type data storage? I
know that they both will use a bit different folder
structures for this and will each want to use their own
drives as default.

4) Are any Anti-virus programs/suites Vista capable at this
point in time.

5) Not having done the dual boot route before, I assume that
any software will need to be installed separately to each OS
installation. Are there any licensing issues that may crop
up with the multiple installs on the same machine?

6) Any advantages to installing programs to a commonly
accessible partition?

Thanks,

Gary Miller

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Since you cannot install Vista x64 from the MCE desktop, you will have to
boot with the dvd. You can format the target drive from Vista Setup using
the Advanced Options.

While the minimum to install Vista may be around 20GB, 40GB is the minimum
recommended partition size for using Vista. More is better. Many antivirus
programs support Vista. The Vista Security Center lists quite a few with
links.

Licensing requirements are stated in the EULA for each program. Dual
installation on the same computer of programs like Office requires two
licenses. You have to read the EULA's.

Unless you use a third party boot manager to hide the Vista volume from XP,
you will lose Vista system restore points and other files depending on
Vista's VSS everytime you boot into XP. You may not want this.

 

[Gary Miller]

Since you cannot install Vista x64 from the MCE desktop,
you will have to boot with the dvd. You can format the
target drive from Vista Setup using the Advanced Options.

There will only be one physical drive and as it is coming
from Dell I assume that all the space will be already
allocated to one or two used partitions. My plan was to use
Partition Magic to reapportion a new primary partition space
to spec enough (60GB ?) for Vista, reduce the XP one and
reallocate the extra available there to a seperate data
partition. I would then let Vista do a format before
installing. Comments?

While the minimum to install Vista may be around 20GB,
40GB is the minimum recommended partition size for using
Vista. More is better. Many antivirus programs support
Vista. The Vista Security Center lists quite a few with
links.

Licensing requirements are stated in the EULA for each
program. Dual installation on the same computer of
programs like Office requires two licenses. You have to
read the EULA's.

I have an MSDN 10 license so the MS apps won't be a problem,
but I better check EULA's on some of my other software it
sounds like.

Unless you use a third party boot manager to hide the
Vista volume from XP, you will lose Vista system restore
points and other files depending on Vista's VSS everytime
you boot into XP. You may not want this.

Will VistaBootPro do the job there? I was not aware of this
issue.

Thanks for the assistance.

Gary

 

[Richard Urban]

Throw away Partition Magic (8.01 used here).

Vista will not install (in my case) on a partition created and formatted by
PM. Vista sees the PM created partition as defective and will not allow you
to install to it. During the install I have to delete the PM partition,
create a new partition using the Vista installer and then format the
partition.

And, if you use PM after this has been done it will tell you that your drive
is corrupted (even though you can boot and use the computer) and do you want
PM to correct the errors. ***SAY NO***! If you allow PM to try to correct
the errors you will lose everything on the drive - all partitions.

Acronis DiskDirector, run from the bootable CD you can create, works fine
with Vista created partitions and Vista works fine with partitions created
by DiskDirector.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

No, VistaBoot Pro will not. I have suggested to ProNetworks that they
include that in a future release of VBP and the moderator accepted the
suggestion as one they will look at. Did you mention the drive size?

 

[Gary Miller]

The drive is a 250MB SATA with plans to add a larger
secondary in the near future so the data section does not
need to be huge at this point.

Any suggestions on good candidates for good boot managers
with the partition hiding ability?

 

[Gary Miller]

Thanks Richard. I will not use PM in that case and just
stick to what I can do with Vista I guess.

 

[Jane C]

I have heard good reports about BootItNG from Terabyte. Sorry, haven't got
URL to hand.

 

[John C. Iliff]

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Great program, been using it for years...steep learning curve.

John

 

[R. C. White, MVP]

Hi, Gary.

Why go through all the convolutions and complications with third-party
partition managers and boot managers? You don't need anything except what's
build into Vista and WinXP.

Boot into WinXP and use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to Shrink your one
partition to leave enough unallocated space to create the new partition.
Then put the Vista DVD in your drive, set your computer to boot from DVD and
reboot. Vista will create and format the new partition for you (unless you
chose to do that with Disk Management while you were there). Then it will
install Vista into that new partition, creating the dual-boot menu in the
process.

Understand that, while most of Vista will be installed in the new partition,
Vista's startup files will be installed in the computer's System Partition,
which is always the Active (bootable) primary partition on the HDD
designated in the BIOS as the current boot device.

When you boot from the Vista DVD, Setup will have no idea what drive letters
WinXP is using, so it will start from scratch. It will assign Drive letter
C: to its own "boot volume" - the new partition - and will install itself
into C:\Windows on that volume. That means it will have to assign a new
letter (probably D to the System Partition, which you've always thought of
as Drive C:.

When you reboot into WinXP, it will still see the System Partition as C: and
will probably assign D: to your new partition, where Vista resides. This
might confuse you as you reboot from one system to the other, but neither
WinXP nor Vista will care.

If you were installing Vista x86, you could make all your drive letters
consistent between the two systems. You could use WinXP's Disk Management
to create and format the partitions you want and assign the drive letters
before you install Vista, then insert the Vista DVD and run Vista Setup from
within WinXP. This way, Vista Setup would see your existing letters and
respect those. You could have WinXP in C:\Windows and Vista in V:\Windows -
in BOTH operating systems.

Unfortunately, though, because of hardware/driver issues, you cannot install
a 64-bit OS while booted into a 32-bit OS (or vice versa). So just boot
from the Vista DVD to install and live with the fact that Vista and WinXP
will disagree as to which is Drive C: and Drive D:. (You COULD create still
another partition, install WinXP x64 there for the sole purpose of
installing Vista x64 with consistent drive letters, then delete the WinXP
x64 partition, but that is FAR more trouble than it probably is worth.) My
guess is that you will retire WinXP within a few weeks of using Vista and
the conflicting drive letters issue will become moot. ;<)

Now, to your Question 2: One of the first things Vista Setup does is check
the size and free space on all your volumes and will not even try to install
into a partition that doesn't have enough room. The last installation I did
(x64 Ultimate RTM) required about 14 GB. But recognize that this is only
enough to get started; as you use Vista, it will create temporary files and
logs and configuration files and lots of other files that will gobble space,
even if you are careful to install apps and store data on other drives. For
instance, hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys will each take, by default, more
space than as much RAM as you have in your computer. My new boot volume is
30 GB, but it has less than 3 GB free after just a week of running Vista,
even though almost all my apps and data are on other drives.

Your questions 3, 5 and 6 can be combined. I've been dual-booting for
nearly 10 years (since Win95/NT4) and, especially when 200 MB was a BIG
drive, the space taken for multiple installations of a single app always
seemed wasteful. So I always install apps to what I call my "neutral"
volume. That is, it does not hold any operating system, just apps and data.
Early on it was Drive E: Data, and it has kept that name and drive letter
through many OS changes.

For example, I have Quicken 2007 installed in E:\QuickenW. (Note that this
is NOT in the \Program Files folder.) When Q2007 arrived last Summer, I
installed it into E:\QuickenW from WinXP Pro in F:; Q2007 automatically
deleted and replaced Q2006, which had been in that folder. Then I rebooted
into the then-current build of the Vista beta x86 and installed Q2007 again
into the same folder. And then I rebooted into Vista x64 and did it again.
And I went through the same multiple-installation routine again each time
there was a new beta build, and again last week when I had to reinstall
Vista RTM on my new motherboard/CPU/chipset. When all done, I could boot
into Vista x64 in the morning and enter some checks. Then I could boot into
WinXP x86 in the afternoon and continue my bookkeeping.

The same technique has worked for other applications: Install them multiple
times, from multiple Windows/Vista versions, into a single folder on my hard
disk. Each OS will make the entries it needs into its own Registry, but
will share the executable files and the "tweaks" that are stored with the
apps.

I can't comment on anti-virus programs. Since NIS 95 refused to work on
WinXP x64, I've been "running bare". I certainly would not recommend that
for everyone, but by "practicing safe hex", I've had no problems with
viruses and very little with other kinds of malware.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Jane C]

Disk Management in XP does not have the 'shrink' option. That is new to
Vista.

 

[R. C. White, MVP]

Hi, Jane.

The Shrink option was not in the original WinXP, or even in SP2 at first.
But I THINK it was added to WinXP's Disk Management at some time during the
Vista beta period (along about RC1, as I recall). I can't check now because
my WinXP refuses to boot (Maybe it's mad because I moved to Vista <g>.).
And I can't look back to the email conversation about this with a couple of
Softies (Vinnie? Dean? Darrell?) in the Beta NGs - because those groups
are gone now.

The Shrink volume option also appeared in WinXP's DiskPart.exe at about the
same time. This is not the lame DiskPart command in the WinXP Recovery
Console, of course, but the very powerful identically-named utility in WinXP
and Vista that does a lot of disk-management tasks in a Command Prompt
window.

If you can still boot into a fully-updated WinXP, please check and report
back.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

R.C.
I do not see the "Shrink" option or anything like it in my Windows XP.
It has SP-2 and is fully up to date with all updates.

 

[R. C. White, MVP]

Hi, Mat - and Jane.

Thanks for checking, Mat. And Thanks to Jane for first correcting my
mistake. Now that my memory is slowly clearing, I think that what I
recalled - and had discussed in the NGs - was that when I noticed that
Shrink was in the late betas, someone pointed out that it had been in Disk
Management and in DiskPart.exe, too, for a couple of builds at that point.
Not in WinXP, as I thought I remembered, but in earlier Vista beta builds.

To Gary, the OP, I'm sorry that I steered you wrong. It looks like you're
left with a chicken-or-egg problem: You can use Shrink to make room for
Vista, but not until you already have Vista installed. :>( Looks like you
may have to use a third-party partition manager, after all, for this first
step.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

He can run diskpart from WinPE by booting with the MSDN Vista dvd. How much
he can shrink a system partition will depend on the last unmovable system
file (probably a VSS file or SR point). Diskpart's shrink command will call
defrag to move as many files as possible towards the "front" of the drive.
Sometimes this does not produce much available space because of an unmovable
system file. Shrink is a journaled procedure so there is no harm in trying.

 

[Nigel Molesworth]

1) I will want to install the 64 bit version of Vista (Core
2 Duo processor should support both x64 and x86)

Is that true? Should I be running 64-bit versions on my Core 2 Duo?

 

[Theo]

Just keep in mind that in both Win x64 and Vista x64 the
driver support is sometimes deficient. So, you need to
consider whether you can find hardware drivers for the
add-in cards, USB devices, and all other peripherals
(printers, scanners, camera, etc.) you want to use.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Your option. You can run either x86 or x64 operating systems on a 64bit
processor. You are not required to run x64.

 

[Barry Watzman]

You don't need Core 2 Duo to do that, most Intel Pentiums for the past 2
years have supported 64-bit XP (and, now, 64-bit Vista). Since
Prescott, I think, although I may be mistaken.

However, the ability to run the 64-bit version doesn't address the
wisdom of doing so. There are a lot of things (hardware and some
programs) that the 64-bit version doesn't support. The question of the
wisdom of running the 64-bit version (very distinct from the ability to
do so) is so individual that it's impossible for anyone in a newsgroup
to answer it for someone else.

 

[John Barnes]

Also keep in mind a number of programs have drivers and even many fairly
recent versions don't have the signed drivers that Vista64 requires. Like
Roxio EMC 8. Installs on 86 not on 64.