How many active partitions for dual boot?

[cooljay]

The two OS's will be installed on two different partitions. Going to have XP/Vista dual boot. How many "active" partitions should I have? Do I need two active partitions?

[DeaconFrost]

I haven't had to set active partitions since Windows 98. If you start with a blank drive, follow the usual, standard dual boot instructions.

Boot from the XP CD, and create it's partition, then finish the install. Only create one partition at this time. Once XP is booting and installed, boot from the Vista DVD, and create a partition from the remaining space on the drive. Once Vista is installed, you'll have a boot menu to choose either OS. These are the very same instructions that have been used since people were dual-booting Win98 and WinNT 4.0.