WIN XP & VISTA ON SAME COMPUTER

[richard dunning]

I have vista home premium installed on a new computer. I would like to take
the hard drive with xp installed, out of my old computer and install it
along with the vista hard drive and be able to boot from either. Is this
possible? What problems might I encounter?
Appreciate any thoughts. Richard

 

[Malke]

I have vista home premium installed on a new computer. I would like to
take the hard drive with xp installed, out of my old computer and
install it along with the vista hard drive and be able to boot from
either. Is this possible? What problems might I encounter?
Appreciate any thoughts. Richard

You certainly can dual-boot, but doing it this way (after the fact) will
be harder. The "normal" way to set up a dual-boot is to install the
older operating system first and then the new operating system. These
links may help:

Dual Booting Windows Vista & Windows XP -
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Install Windows XP On A Machine Already Running Windows Vista (MVP John
Barnett) -
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install_windows_xp_on_machine_running_vista.htm

There are some other factors to consider, too.

1. Make sure that you have XP drivers for all your hardware first. Do
this by going to the computer mftr.'s website (assuming it is an OEM box
like an HP, Dell, etc.). If there are no drivers for XP for your
specific make/model computer, forget it and go with a virtual solution
instead. Understand that at the very least you will need to do a Repair
Install of XP after putting it in the new computer, possibly a Clean
Install.

2. There is an issue with System Restore on a dual-boot between XP and
Vista if the operating systems can see each other. See MVP Bert Kinney's
information about this - http://bertk.mvps.org/html/vista.html

There is another solution - virtual computing. Use Microsoft's VirtualPC
(free) or VMWare (not free but I prefer it) and create a virtual machine
running XP with Vista being the host. This doesn't utilize your old hard
drive, but you could format it and use it for extra storage on the new
machine. Here is the VirtualPC newsgroup for questions about using it -
microsoft.public.virtualpc


Malke

 

[richard dunning]

Thanks for the response. I did read the info at the links you suggested.
Didn't realize the process would be so complicated. I don't feel that I
have enough computer skills to tackle this one. Again thanks.
Richard

 

[alexB]

I once ruined my Vista because I wanted to "improve" a sick XP on another
partition. The Boot Menu lost all the memory of Vista because I tried to
install XP afterwards (although in Repair mode).

It is highly advisable not to mess with XP after you got Vista installed
unless XP is preexisting, although certain people claimed that they
developed ways to do it but you need three partitions, I think for that.

It may be a better idea to install another Vista on the second HDD because
having a second OS is often useful. Example: I had to verify if my WD HDD
was OK, I mean C: drive. I downloaded Lifeguard Diagnostics from Western
Digital and ran it but from another partition, actually on this machine I
had a preexisting XP on D:. So it worked fine. It turned out HDD was OK.

 

[John Whitworth]

I once ruined my Vista because I wanted to "improve" a sick XP on another
partition. The Boot Menu lost all the memory of Vista because I tried to
install XP afterwards (although in Repair mode).

It is highly advisable not to mess with XP after you got Vista installed
unless XP is preexisting, although certain people claimed that they
developed ways to do it but you need three partitions, I think for that.

Even if XP is pre-existing, you can still run into trouble. XP will:

- delete any system restore files that Vista has created.
- absolutely balls up any Vista-created partitions if you do anything using
XP's Disk Management tools.

Best way to do this is to hide the Vista partition(s) from XP, using some
boot up tool, like System Commander from Avanquest.

JW

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have vista home premium installed on a new computer. I would like to
take the hard drive with xp installed, out of my old computer and
install it along with the vista hard drive and be able to boot from
either. Is this possible? What problems might I encounter?
Appreciate any thoughts. Richard

Normally, the older OS must be installed first unless you wish to
acquire and use some 3rd-party partition and boot management utility.
(In which case you have to follow the instructions provided by whatever
3rd party solution you select.) However, this KB Article (not for the
faint of heart) explains how to repair the Vista boot process after
installing WinXP:

Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of
the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

However, dual-booting is no longer necessary in most situations.

Why not download a Virtual Machine application, such as Microsoft's
VirtualPC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp?) or
Innotek's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) and run Win2K and your
legacy applications within a virtual computer. Both are free and work
with Vista.

NOTE: Microsoft does not support the use of VirtualPC 2007 on Vista
Home editions, but several people have reported that it works. Your
results may vary.



--

Bruce Chambers

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~ Denis Diderot

 

[richard dunning]

Bruce
That was some very good reading about using 2 operating systems. Not sure I
want to try it though because it does not reference the home versions of
Vista as being supported.
Thanks for your input and I have bookmarket the Msft page.
Richard