Install vista on multiple drives within a single PC?

A

Arceon

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 25, 2006
Messages
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Interesting question: Can you install one copy of Vista one two seperate hard drives within the same PC, and dual boot them. The question is not so much "Is it possible", thats obvious, its more "Is this legal / allowed?".

I ask because i plan on vlite-ing my vista disk and having a "Gaming" edition one one drive, and a full fat version on the other, then dual booting.
 
"The software license is permanently assigned to the device with which you acquired the software. That device is the “licensed device.” A hardware partition is considered to be a separate device."

Apparently not, according to the EULA (that's an OEM EULA, anyway).
 
Hmmm i thought the device with which you aquired an OEM disk could be any device central to the running of the computer i.e. Motherboard, Ram, CPU, HDD. (I bought my OEM disk myself, as im a Microsoft licensed system builder)

If the OEM disk was bought with a motherboard does this make it exempt? Equally does that mean you cant install it on a hard drive because thats a seperate device??

Microsoft really don't do plain english do they lol
 
If you keep the system running well and keep it properly maintained, you don't need separate instals just for gaming. That's akin to use a nuclear bomb to hammer a nail into some wood. It is actually quite simple to keep a Windows system running at peak performance in XP, and even more so with Vista.

Also, if you care about system stability, avoid vLite like the plague. So many people have had weird issues after using it. Maintain your system the right way, and you won't need to do all that extra work.

And to answer your question, you'd need two separate licenses.
 
Well yes it could be seen a little extreme, but the difference really has to be seen. I had a nLite XP install and a regular, and we are talking upto 20fps difference in some situations. With vista this should be even more dramatic.

You only run into problems with vLite and nLite when people get click happy, ive stripped XP down to the point where fully installed, it only took up 500MB of HDD space, removing networking, drivers, core components, you name it, and it was solid as a rock. Which i promptly played crysis on :p

Honestly my system is maintained weekly, registry cleaned and compacted, 3rd party defragged, stripped of all the glitz of Aero etc, its become something of a routine.

I'll probabley end up doing this anyway, even if i have to buy a Basic license lol
 
Arceon said:
I had a nLite XP install and a regular, and we are talking upto 20fps difference in some situations. With vista this should be even more dramatic.

You only run into problems with vLite and nLite when people get click happy, ive stripped XP down to the point where fully installed, it only took up 500MB of HDD space, removing networking, drivers, core components, you name it, and it was solid as a rock. Which i promptly played crysis on :p
Click to expand...


I can understand removing network drivers for cards that don't pertain to your system, raid drivers and other drivers that are not needed, scanners printers, etc. What are some of the core components that you are referring to? I take core components as essential componetns for the system. Maybe it's just the word choice used to describe you vanilla XP install.
 
I can see that removing unnecessary drivers and such would remove the disk space required for installation.. but that certainly can't account for speed increases. Of course, removing other components might provide an improvement there, although 20fps seems very high; XP isn't doing that much in the background surely?
 
The license for OEM is tied to the motherboard. However, the EULA also stipulates that only ONE copy can be installed at a time. To install a second copy on another drive or partition, you'd need another license.
 
Arceon said:
Well yes it could be seen a little extreme, but the difference really has to be seen. I had a nLite XP install and a regular, and we are talking upto 20fps difference in some situations.
Click to expand...
If you take a moment to think about what nLite lets you remove, you'd see right away that this is not possible. You may have seen a difference between installs, but I can tell you right now, nLite had nothing to do with it. As others have said, removing drivers and some unused components will not yield a speed increase.
 
ryan_975 said:
The license for OEM is tied to the motherboard. However, the EULA also stipulates that only ONE copy can be installed at a time. To install a second copy on another drive or partition, you'd need another license.
Click to expand...

Thanks Ryan thats exactley what i wanted to know. Shame tho...

Mithent said:
I can see that removing unnecessary drivers and such would remove the disk space required for installation.. but that certainly can't account for speed increases. Of course, removing other components might provide an improvement there, although 20fps seems very high; XP isn't doing that much in the background surely?
Click to expand...

deaconfrost said:
If you take a moment to think about what nLite lets you remove, you'd see right away that this is not possible. You may have seen a difference between installs, but I can tell you right now, nLite had nothing to do with it. As others have said, removing drivers and some unused components will not yield a speed increase.
Click to expand...

Ok maybe 20 fps was a slight exaggeration, but there is a performace increase and it is very noticable. Yes a new install is always going to give better performance, but removing things such as Windows Firewall, Security Center, Networking Components, etc etc, really does cut down on background processes. My copy of XP has a commit charge of around 50mb when fully loaded, which is pretty good.

I may have to dig out the nLite config file i used and post it here, if you really want to see the diff yourselves your more than welcome to use it.
 
I'd be willing to bet the "performance" increase you think you got was mearly due to it being a fresh install. Given the list of what you removed, you are damn lucky the system even ran. You aren't going to get an increase in gaming performance by removing the Windows Firewall.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I'd be willing to bet the "performance" increase you think you got was mearly due to it being a fresh install. Given the list of what you removed, you are damn lucky the system even ran. You aren't going to get an increase in gaming performance by removing the Windows Firewall.
Click to expand...

Lol I removed slightly more than that, and as i said, as long as you fully understand the implications of every component you remove, its quite easy to build a stripped version.

I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on this one eh :)
 
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