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Thread: XP & Vista on a dual boot

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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    Default XP & Vista on a dual boot

    Hi all

    I currently have XP pro on the PC, but have a copy of Vista that I want to try, is it possible to load Vista on the PC and have the PC running as a dual boot system?

    Would I need to reformat the whole h/d again and hence loose everything, or could I get away with partioning the hard drive with XP already there and loading Vista on the other partion?

    any advice would be greatly appreciated
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    Senior Member NoService's Avatar
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    make a new partition or better still add another hard drive and instal vista onto that, once completed you will have the option to boot into xp or vista on loading.

    NS
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    Member Zero Alpha's Avatar
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    Yes this is very easy to do, Assuming you have only one hard drive and 1 primary partition, just resize the current partition so that you can add a second partition. This can be done using 'Computer Management\Disk Management', off the top of my head its in >control panel>administrative tools.

    Just back up your data first as this is a really simple task for an expert, but easy to lose your data for a beginner.

    You can find heaps of step by step guides. Just search for 'dual boot windows xp vista'.

    Then when you get the hang of that I can teach you how to have 14 unique operating systems just like mine :-)

    Good luck.

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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zero Alpha View Post
    Yes this is very easy to do, Assuming you have only one hard drive and 1 primary partition, just resize the current partition so that you can add a second partition. This can be done using 'Computer Management\Disk Management', off the top of my head its in >control panel>administrative tools.

    Just back up your data first as this is a really simple task for an expert, but easy to lose your data for a beginner.

    You can find heaps of step by step guides. Just search for 'dual boot windows xp vista'.

    Then when you get the hang of that I can teach you how to have 14 unique operating systems just like mine :-)
    Good luck.

    are you serious i'd like to do that

    however, I've just had play with it (probably a bit late now) via following the instructions from the help tab in computer management, it appears that its not going to let me create another partion on my c drive?, I'm sure it can be done and am probably missing a step somewhere, I'll have a further play tonight before it gets to late and report back tomorrow.
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    Senior Member RHCP's Avatar
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    Windows will not let you resize its own operating partition...

    - a linux boot disc.

    Boot from gparted and resize your partition and then create a new partition for vista.

    I would personally rather grub bootloader...but then again, i always have a linux install.

    Cheers, RHCP.
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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RHCP View Post
    Windows will not let you resize its own operating partition...

    - a linux boot disc.

    Boot from gparted and resize your partition and then create a new partition for vista.

    I would personally rather grub bootloader...but then again, i always have a linux install.

    Cheers, RHCP.

    thansk RHCP, I found that webpage last nigt, I'll printoff the pages at work today and have agood read then have a go on the weekend and keep ya updated.
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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    Hi guys

    Just beentrying to load Vista Black Ultimate edition this afternoon and she just won't load, I can get to the stage where it initialises and then when it won'ts to format the drive and error arises, saying my h/d isn't big enough?

    at the moment I'm running 3 h/d's and I used one of the spare h/d and removed the other while I tried to load vista....my 3 h/d's are 80gig each!

    I'll have another go tonight, and see what happens.
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    - If you want to resize your current hard disk (as RHCP has said you can't resize a system partition through Windows), you could do it with 3rd party apps. My prefered choice is Hirens Boot CD. Yes i know the CD is abit shady (full of old commercial and abbandonware applications), but i acually contacted a program developer that an app has been installed on the CD and they pretty much said 'i don't give a $tuff it's so old we don't care' - .

    - See if this solutions helps you re: the space issue

    - Partition order (in dual boot systems) played a big part of me setting mine up - haven't done it for a while but to do with which partition came first and size of it etc.

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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    Ok, hi guys, I had another go at loading Vista Black ultimate edtion V2 last night, only this I tried to load on a 250gig h/d, I don't want to partition the h/d, I can get to the stage where it wants to format the h/d but then the error comes up "could not find the required drivers on the installation disk"

    any ideas?
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    Senior Member osci's Avatar
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    update

    I again tried installing vista black edition v2 32 bit as a clean install, this time I got at least 30% into the install and then the error message, it appears there is some files missing from the install disk, so not much I can do about this unless a kind member would like to send me another copy of this?
    Democracy & Ignorance = A Winning Combination

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