Dualboot n00b, please show me the way!

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Buztafen

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
238
Morning all,

Im upgrading my comp at the moment and im thinking about installing both XP and Vista 64..XP for old games and Vista for the latest and greatest.

Thing is ive never done this before and havent the foggiest about how to go about it. Basically need a few pointers like if and how its done.

Ive currently got 2 x 160gb SATA HD's which have done me proud, 1 has anything i want to keep on it and the other is obviously for the OS. Should i partition the drive so both co-exist on 1 HD? Should i get a separate faster HD for Vista 64?....since i last built a comp about 4 years ago theres new stuff come out or down in price like RAID, SATAII etc...Would i benefit from a new HD.

Any and all help would be much appreciated, cheers.:rolleyes:
 
Here are my new builds specs if theyre needed:-

Q6600
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6
4GB G.SKILL DDR2800
2 x 160GB HD
TAGAN 600w PSU
8800GTX

Cheers.
 
I'm not a big fan of dual-booting at all, to be honest. I'd be willing to bet that your older games will either work in Vista, or if they are so old they won't, if you run XP in a virtual machine, you can still run those old games. StarCraft, for example, runs just fine in an XP VM. It's much cleaner than a dual boot system, and more practical to use.

If you simply must dual boot, you should decide on using one drive for both OSes, leaving one for data storage, or using on OS per drive. There's no right or wrong, it is your choice. Then, you always load the older OS first. Let's say you use the method of using one drive per OS.

You'd wipe out both drives, then boot from your XP disc. Install XP as normal to the first drive, and leave the second drive untouched. Once XP is installed, boot from the Vista disc and point it's installer to use the second drive. Finish Vista's install, and you will be given a choice at boot to which OS you want to use.
 
Take it from me, I had 2 80's with XP and Vista on them. Dual booting was easy as anything. Now I have a 320GB with them both on it and I can't get the BCD to work right. It loads me into XP without showing me a boot manager and the only way I can even get into Vista is to pop in the Vista DVD and then the boot manager shows up.

I would say for ease of use, go with 2 seperate HD.

I installed XP on one HD then removed the hard drive and installed Vista on a second Hard drive. After both had an OS I then hooked up both hard drives and Vista's BCD did the rest.
 
Rusty4560 said:
I installed XP on one HD then removed the hard drive and installed Vista on a second Hard drive. After both had an OS I then hooked up both hard drives and Vista's BCD did the rest.
Click to expand...
Why would you remove one of the drives, unless you planned on swapping them in the BIOS or with a removable drive cage? The dual booting procedures haven't changed in 10+ years, so I'm not quite sure why people insist on making it more complicated.
 
If mixing Windows...they've made it easy if you install the oldest OS first, install the newest OS last. Separate drives, or same drive and just different partition...your choice.
 
Cheers guys going to split one of my 160gb in two and install both on that. If it goes wrong i can just repartition it.

Next question....are my 'old' SATA one drives crap now....would a newer hard drive yield a noticeable increase in performance. I mainly play games and watch HD content (including Blurays/HD DVD's) on my comp at the mo.

Cheers.
 
Buztafen said:
Next question....are my 'old' SATA one drives crap now....would a newer hard drive yield a noticeable increase in performance. I mainly play games and watch HD content (including Blurays/HD DVD's) on my comp at the mo.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

It depends on the models you're comparing. Newer drives tend to be faster, and have larger cache. Yet...there are not a lot of currently new drives that can take my still original first generation WD Raptor drive.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Why would you remove one of the drives, unless you planned on swapping them in the BIOS or with a removable drive cage? The dual booting procedures haven't changed in 10+ years, so I'm not quite sure why people insist on making it more complicated.
Click to expand...


So that they both show up as drive C: in windows. If you leave a drive in with the OS on it your next install would come up as D: when you go to install the second OS and that drives me insane.
 
That drives me crazy as well...which is another reason I've been going the VM route for a while.
 
Rusty4560 said:
So that they both show up as drive C: in windows. If you leave a drive in with the OS on it your next install would come up as D: when you go to install the second OS and that drives me insane.
Click to expand...

You don't need them to show up as drive C. Your second install would shove %system% to whatever other partition/drive letter you chose for it, like D or E or F or whatever. The OS itself doesn't have some freudian desire to be installed on drive C
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
You don't need them to show up as drive C. Your second install would shove %system% to whatever other partition/drive letter you chose for it, like D or E or F or whatever. The OS itself doesn't have some freudian desire to be installed on drive C
Click to expand...

I know this... I just want my system partition to be labeled as C:...

Can I have that preference or is that not allowed? geez..
 
If you want to dual boot..gotta play by the rules.

Desire to dual boot should overcome the loss of sleep at night just because some behind the scenes drive letter is not "C".

Else...go for the "hot swap" drives..which isn't really dual booting.
 
Wtf are you guys talking about? It can be done.. I did it... You turned this thread into something completely irrelevent.
 
I would try to make your drives RAID 1 in case one dies.... Then I would partition them into separate partitions. Install Windows XP on the D drive. Then install Vista on the C drive. That should work.
 
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