Installing Vista with XP pre-installed.

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Stardusted

Limp Gawd
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May 10, 2007
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I decided to give Vista a go, so I bought the evil os, the seed of the very devil himself, but... since I already have XP installed, and no matter if I like vista or not, do not intend to stop using XP, I want to make a safe installation and be able to dual boot.

If I take out the XP hard drive completely, and install Vista on my other HDD, then after installation re-plug the xp drive, what will happen ?

Will I be able to dual-boot afterwards ? As I see it, the system will boot from XP first, if I leave as 1st boot drive the XP HDD. Then, If I use the boot menu of my motherboard and choose the other hard disk drive, Vista will boot.

Correct ?
 
Stardusted said:
I decided to give Vista a go, so I bought the evil os, the seed of the very devil himself, but... since I already have XP installed, and no matter if I like vista or not, do not intend to stop using XP, I want to make a safe installation and be able to dual boot.

If I take out the XP hard drive completely, and install Vista on my other HDD, then after installation re-plug the xp drive, what will happen ?

Will I be able to dual-boot afterwards ? As I see it, the system will boot from XP first, if I leave as 1st boot drive the XP HDD. Then, If I use the boot menu of my motherboard and choose the other hard disk drive, Vista will boot.

Correct ?
Click to expand...

If you do what you said you will experience troubles. You must leave the first drive connected while installing Vista so that Vista recognizes another OS and can configure its bootloader appropriately.

BTW, if you're already intent on hating Vista, why try it?
 
Actually I intend to install it purely for gaming purposes (only for DX10 games).

Now, when you say I ll have trouble If I do what I described, you mean that the bootloader won't recognise two OSes ? Cause I expect that to happen.

Thing is, will the pc still be able to boot either in xp or vista using the motherboard boot menu ?
 
You can install so the drives are truly independant.
When you isntall a new OS from CD, make sure only the 1 hard disk is connected.
This will give you a separately bootable hard drive that will run the OS.

Once installed, plug all the hard drives back in and change the drive you want to boot from in the CMOS.

I use this technique all the time, its worked excellently for years.
 
Nenu said:
You can install so the drives are truly independant.
When you isntall a new OS from CD, make sure only the 1 hard disk is connected.
This will give you a separately bootable hard drive that will run the OS.

Once installed, plug all the hard drives back in and change the drive you want to boot from in the CMOS.

I use this technique all the time, its worked excellently for years.
Click to expand...

My goal exactly. Thank you very very much. :)
 
Here is a walkthrough on how to do it with XP currently installed, no need to remove the existing hard drive during installation... I just installed Vista64 this weekend using a similar method to the linked above and it worked out nicely, (once I figured out how Vista decided to orginize the other dirves in my system.)
 
FallenMystic said:
Here is a walkthrough on how to do it with XP currently installed, no need to remove the existing hard drive during installation... I just installed Vista64 this weekend using a similar method to the linked above and it worked out nicely, (once I figured out how Vista decided to orginize the other dirves in my system.)
Click to expand...

He is installing to a second hard drive not a second partition on his boot drive.
 
There is also another way without choosing gpart or whatever program they are using above.

Keep both HDs connected. Slap the cd in and choose custom installation or advanced when it asks you if you want to upgrade xp or a seperate installation.

Point vista to the second HD and let it do the rest.

Once installed you will have the option to start an os when you start the PC
 
Nenu said:
He is installing to a second hard drive not a second partition on his boot drive.
Click to expand...

Same method can be used, I've got Xp installed on the Raptor and Vista installed on a seagate, just letting BootManager handle selection process.
 
boxterduke said:
There is also another way without choosing gpart or whatever program they are using above.

Keep both HDs connected. Slap the cd in and choose custom installation or advanced when it asks you if you want to upgrade xp or a seperate installation.

Point vista to the second HD and let it do the rest.

Once installed you will have the option to start an os when you start the PC
Click to expand...

i dont think he wants vista installing its bootloader on the xp install.
 
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