Dual booting Vista/XP

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CaseyJenks

n00b
Joined
Jun 27, 2006
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So i upgraded from XP to Vista RC2 last weekend. Vista broke some openGL 2.0 capabilities I need for a graphics class I am taking. I have heard that setting up a dual boot if your primary OS is already Vista is difficult if not impossible altogether.

Can this be done? It would save me a lot of time. Backing up all my data & reinstalling apps would take me a while.

Thanks,
Casey
 
i dont think it can be done. usually people dont even upgrade to vista, but do a clean install or just on a separate partition...that way you can keep both OSes.

good luck with your problem.
 
This is exactly why people shouldn't be installed Vista on their primary machine, especially if that machine is used for something important, like a class. Setting up a dual boot by adding the older OS afterwards probably won't work very well.

At this point, it looks like you'll be backing up your data, and reformatting.
 
Personnally, I'm currently running XP/Vista dual-botting. It's perfect like that but it require some preparation...

You need to install XP first on a disk big enough to hold at least 40 Gb for 2 partitions. Make 1 20 Gb partition and leave the remaining space empty then install XP on the 20 Gb partition. When you are done, use the XP disk manager MMC to make a new partition, but don't assign a letter at all.

After doing those preliminary steps, install vista on the new partition and after it's done, Vista will create a bootmanager and if all goes well, vista would be also on C: and will not even see the XP partition at all, which is the intended goal to avoid accidental messups.

EDIT : I reread your post and I see you overwrote XP with Vista RC2 so the best bet is to backup data, reformat then follow the proper steps.
 
Just make two partitions on your drive and load up both os's on them seperatly. That's the proper way. I have an x1900gt and ati doesn't even support opengl at all in vista. I have winxp on my main 160gb drive and vista loaded up on my 60gb backup drive. Vista still has some issues. My main one being no support for opengl at all yet. When I just bought quake 4, that can be pretty annoying. Vista takes up A LOT of hard drive space and ram though. Wow..

I'm not sure you can install xp after that. If you upgraded properly in vista (it is the RC1 though), there might be a uninstall option in the add/remove programs.
 
The OLDEST operating system needs to be installed FIRST, i.e., install XP as the other guy said, then install Vista to a different partition.

Vista also will name it's partition "C" regardless of what partition it is on, so the best bet is to have TWO partitions of at least 20gb each and install XP on the "D" or second partition then install Vista to "C" or the first partition.
 
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