Hi SL Mike--
I like dual booting, particularly on a laptop or notebook because it allows
you to always have the files and folders you spent years possibly
accumulating and on XP with you at all times.
There are ways of avoiding what Gabriel has correctly pointed out happens on
a dual boot of XP and Vista.
1) if your edition has Bit Locker--you can use Bit Locker to protect the
restore points on Vista when you boot to XP.
2) If you deploy a shortcut from Vista to the XP desktop--you rarely if ever
have to boot to the XP desktop to access your XP files and folders and that
avoids the system restore point problem on XP.
3) If you did boot to XP and hadn't deployed Bit Locker protection of the
Vista restore points in the rare event you had to, you can remedy this by
immediately creating a manual restore point on Vista when you go back to
Vista, but again I find it never necessary to go to XP since I have access
to all my XP files except to check that it's "doing OK and that One Care is
all right or to make sure it has all the updates that apply to it installed.
The way to access the XP desktop from Vista is to simply type this into the
Vista run box (Windows Key + R):
XP Drive\Documents and Settings\SL Mike's User Profile on XP\Desktop
If you were on XP's desktop which is rarely necessary:
Vista Drive\Users\Mike's Profile\Desktop
You can also access any files or folders on the XP drive by simply typing in
the name of the XP drive in the Vista run box or clicking Computer on the
start menu or accessing it from any Vista explorer folder. You can access
any Vista folder or files from XP by typing Vista Drive\Users\SL Mike's
Profle on Vista
You can put a shortcut to either OS's desktop or any folder by simply
dragging the folder icon from the upper left corner of the accessed folder's
name bar to the respective desktop.
A simple way to dual boot is to go to the XP desktop, use Partition Magic or
it's possible to use Ranish free, and create a partition from the XP
desktop. You can't use Disk Management to do this from XP (hence the
necessity for a 3rd party partition maker) because Disk Management on XP is
not fault tolerant--i.e. it'll make a new partition but at the expense of
losing all the stuff you have on the XP drive. You can create a partition
of whatever size you want and have space for, and then run the Vista setup
from the XP desktop to preserve the same Drive letters if you like, and if
you click advanced, you can select the new partition you have created where
you can install Vista.
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/winvista_rtm_install_13.jpg
Good luck,
CH
