Installing both Vista and XP

I

iguman

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I built a new computer, dual core amd, 2gb ram and a 8800gt. main reason is intense gaming.

After spending hours reading forums and google results for the best performance xp \ vista, best graphics xp \ vista, dx 10 / 9 , driver compatability and such, I have come to the (perfect?) solution. why not installing vista, and xp on the same machine?

My questions are:

1) will there be a problem installing vista on one drive, lets say C:/ for example, then booting from xp cd and installing it on another drive lets say D:/, and that's it?

2) will there be a problem or some kind of contradiction between the different drivers and programs installed on the oss?

3) will there be any problem with installing dx10 for vista and dx9 for xp, and just play what i want where I want when I want?

4) except hard disc space, will there be any contradiction or problem at all between them?
 
In my opinion, the best way to do this is to install both of them on 1 HD. I'm pretty sure if you put them on seperate physical drives, you'll need to enter the BIOS each time you want to switch and change the boot drive. If you partition 1 drive and put both on the same physical drive, you just choose which version to boot when you restart from the bootloader. If you go this route, install XP first and then Vista. Vista overwrites the XP bootloader with it's own. There are some hacks I've read about to enable you to install Vista first and XP second, but they seem to be more of a pain then just doing XP then Vista. This is the way I did it, and it is very easy. I chopped 1 150gig raptor in half for XP and Vista and my second one in half for installing XP programs on half and Vista programs on the other half.

2. No, no problem at all with drivers

3. No, no problem at all. You don't actually istall DX10. Vista ships wih it, just like you don't install DX9. It gets installed with the OS.

4. None that I have come across as of yet.

When booted into either OS, the other OS "ceases" to exist. This includes all drivers, programs, and games installed. (well, almost all. Programs that don't require the registry may work such as CPU-Z. Steam games installed under XP did not require a reinstall, tho steam itself did)

Hope that helps you out some, others will surely chime in with their experiences. As for me, I haven't booted into XP in a couple of months now. I'm using Vista Ultimate 64 and like it alot. I just finished Medal Of Honor Airborne and had 0 problems with it. Bioshock and Half Life 2 work fine so far.
 
Thanks for the info! going to install xp now and vista 64-bit right after it and use whatever is right for me at a certain time :) thanks again!
 
The only suggestion I'll add, and it may have been said already, is to leave the second part of your drive blank and unformatted. Finish up the XP install, and then set up the second partition during the Vista install routine.
 
I seemed to think that the dual boot of xp and vista would be quite useful. Ive had it for about ... 5 months now? I've booted into xp about 3 times, for less than 20 minutes each time. In the long run, its just 20 wasted gb on my hard drive.

Anyways, this is the guide i used for it, and it worked quite well:
http://www.syschat.com/dual-boot-vista-xp-vista-already-1946.html

Afterwards, I've installed tweak-VI, and there were configuration settings for the boot loader. I dropped the wait time to auto-select the OS down from 20 seconds to 5, and its all good.
 
SatTech said:
In my opinion, the best way to do this is to install both of them on 1 HD. I'm pretty sure if you put them on seperate physical drives, you'll need to enter the BIOS each time you want to switch and change the boot drive.
Click to expand...

This is not correct.

You install XP first, then Vista, Vista can install the bootloader on the first drive, then actually go boot off the second (Vista) when you select it.

No matter if you use one or two drives, you should Install XP first, before Vista.
 
Yes, what Monkey God said is correct. I didn't have my coffee yet, so that's my excuse for missing the blurb he quoted.
 
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