Dual-booting Vista and XP, any trouble?

I was thinking of using Vista and XP as a dual-boot option for my notebook. I'm wondering if anyone had any trouble doing this at all. I have Vista Ultimate installed already, however, I was also going to put Win XP on as my second OS. Did an installation of XP wipe out Vista for anyone, or were you able to partition the PC, and have XP work in the free hard drive space? I'm wondering about this, because I had XP once before (it was an OEM version, tho), and it seemed to override my Linux platform, and I didn't want the same thing to happen to Vista. Did anyone have trouble with dual-booting these two versions of Windows at all?

I have XP, Vista and Ubuntu on my system.

I started from a new hard drive, but you may need to reformat yours to start installing your OSs ... as you need to install XP first!. You can use the partitioning software from the XP installer, or something else if you prefer.

You shouldn't have a problem with your OEM version of XP Pro as long it was installed on the same laptop in the past. My XP is also OEM and installed fine on my desktop (same motherboard, etc, just the hard drive that changed).

Once you've got XP up and running, you can run the Vista installer from within XP and install it to one of your other partitions (it has to be on another partition).

I also have Ubuntu, but I set that up to boot from a floppy, rather than have it overwrite the Windows boot menu. Basically just playing it safe, plus I don't use Linux that often - just to test my BlitzMax stuff really.

The only thing to consider is how much space you give XP versus Vista. That will depend on which you'll be using most and what you'll be using it for. If you'll still be using XP for games then you may want to give a larger portion to XP because of the amount of space games can take up. Also, bear in mind that Vista requires a fair chunk itself (10GB on my system, where XP takes up less than 3GB).

Basically, works just fine, but XP has to be installed first.

It is easier to install XP first, but it is possible to do it the other way around. The simplest is install XP, boot to Vista DVD and it will automagically set up dual boot. The only time I have had any issues is when I was installing a dual boot to a SCSI RAID.

Which is great if your computer came with one... My laptop didn't... Pre-installed and no disc in the package...

OK that will be your only problem. XP will wipe out Vistas new bootloader, which, depending on how lucky you feel and the colour of the moon at the time, you may be able to get back by running Vistas recovery tool on the DVD... or, you may have to do it manually using the appropriate command and the command line interface. Sorry, I forget what that command is.

Usually, you should probably have no problem using the recovery tool. But you'd have bmuch more smooth sailing if you installed XP first.

Other than that, the only issues that may arise is when you swap from OS to OS - Recycle Bins and System Restore points are incompatible with each other and tend to get wiped (recycle bins on random occassions, system restore points all the time without fail).

The usual 'don't install both on the same partition' and that's about it =]


Generally the XP CD asks which partition you want to install XP onto - if it didn't, your OEM copy may be automatically configured to kill the first partition or something. If that's what happenned to Linux, it will probably happen to Vista.

If you did choose to install to a different partition, then all of Linux that got scrubbed was its bootloader - but using Linux, you should have already known that =] Unless maybe the first partition wasn't NTFS or FAT and XP wanted to store its bootloader there and didn't ask questions before reformatting. I'm a little fuzzy on how that works.


15GB is needed during the install procedure and MS recommends you give it 40 ;]


No OEM disc? No recovery? Sounds to me like you got a raw deal worth complaining about.

Ahh, okay, but what about two OEM copies of Windows? Since I have an OEM Win XP MCE 2005, as well as Vista Ultimate OEM, I'm wondering if Microsoft would allow you to have two different OSes on the same CPU like that, under the license. That's something that I'm somewhat concerned about, atm.

Both of mine are OEM, so there aren't any problems.

There wouldn't be any problems, they use two totally seperate keys. I don't think the XP/Vista databases are connected. Just don't run both OSs at the same time I'd say ;]

Maybe you should try using MS Virtual Machine 07:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Yeah, I was thinking of Virtual PC, but not too sure if that would be nearly as strong as using the Vista partitioner, shrinking the partition, and installing XP flat out on the empty partition at all... To me, a true dual-boot would seem like it would bring more solid performance and efficiency with games, and Blitz, and what not.

If you want to use games on both partitions, Virtual PC is out. VMWare 5+ is a possible solution, but nothing beats dual booting.

Yeah, that's what I mean, would true dual-booting make XP and Vista far more stable on their own, as opposed to virtualizing them? After all, virtualizing would probably just use a fraction of your resources, and doing Blitz, fancy media web surfing (like streaming video/music), and high-end DX9 games, and what not, I would think that XP would not be able to use all that in emulation mode.

With VMWare 5+ and its 3D acceleration XP can do very very well, except for anything that uses shaders. When I was playing with it I had an XP client running under an XP host (a Vista host is likely to be more demanding obviously) and I only tested 2D games, but with the acceleration turned on the XP client was running games like Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 about 50-75% of the speed of the same games on the XP host. I didn't test any 3D games but I read that they have a similar performance, excepting 3D features that are missing or broken.

Standard Windows Desktop programs such as IE (video streaming/flash) and Office etc etc weren't accelerated from what I could tell and bore much the same results as without it turned on - which, depending on your host machine of course, all runs at quite acceptable speeds.

If you're really into gaming, you'd be better off dual booting, but if Vista is serving you fine, there's only 1 or 2 games that you'd play in XP or you're simply testing Blitz games, then virtualising might be quite acceptable for you.