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Geek Culture / How can I dual boot Vista and XP?

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 06:16 Edited at: 30th May 2007 09:06
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Edit: Fixed!


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Raven
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Posted: 29th May 2007 07:53
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Yes, but you have to install to a seperate partition/hdd.

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:09
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I would prefer to partition it, but I do have an HDD from a dead PC. Hopefully it still works, if I need it. Right now, when I check my partitions through the Vista Installer, it says I have 2 partitions on the C: disk. One is my 200+GB main storage place, and the other is unused space that I'm not sure how to remove. How could I remove that unused partition, or add space to it?
Thanks!


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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:14 Edited at: 29th May 2007 08:15
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If it is unused... when you setup winxp you'll be able to create a new partition & format that space as NTFS, and install winxp there. How much space is there? If you have enough your in luck.

And very lucky, becuase it would be more difficult to gain that space back if it were part of the vista partition, would have been some work.

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indi
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:18
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Sometimes third party vendors like DELL use a tiny partition of say 8 megs per say as a recovery area.
If you have a partition of that size or similar and a third party machine I would not touch it.

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:18
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Hmm, the small unused partition is only 4.6GB, which by far is not enough.. :/ What would be more work? Reclaiming the Vista partition space or just popping in an HD?


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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:25 Edited at: 29th May 2007 08:28
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Reclaiming the Vista partition for sure is more difficult if even possible. Raven & Indi can speak more about Vista, but in my experience it's not fun trying to repartition with Partition Magic or Ranish(free) even for XP. I reckon the same if not more is true of a Vista install. I also only deal with corporate editions of OS's that don't require activation. So it makes my life a bit easier when it comes to reimaging, or reconfiguring Hardware.

And it's still high risk, although both apps allow you to attempt virtually to see if it can be done. In my experience, if you don't have an image of your HD, I wouldn't even attempt it.

Throwing the second HD in is simple, and it is what I would recommend to you.

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Eric T
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:29
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One thing I've been wondering, since it hasn't been reported much: How are Vista's disk management options? Anything new?

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:34
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Thanks zenassem, I'd rather do the low risk way first. Hopefully that HD still works.

Quote: "How are Vista's disk management options? Anything new?"

Its pretty much all the same, a few new additions, and a few things moved around. The one thing you mainly notice on the My Computer page, you will see a bar representing how much disk space you are using, and what the total size is. Kind of interesting, but nothing too useful.


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Steve J
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:42
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Defrag is autodone at late hours of the night. My PC runs silk smooth on that end.

Time is ticking away.
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Eric T
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:43
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By Disk Management, I meant like Partitioning, Re-Sizing, etc. Surely they've introduced Re-Sizing so I don't have to go to a 3rd party progie when I need to re-size a partition. Thinking of picking up vista for a bit, but definitely dual booting it with my XP and Ubuntu.

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Steve J
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Posted: 29th May 2007 08:45
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Nope, not that I see right now. They put cool security functions so certain partitions are usable by only certain users though.

Time is ticking away.
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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:06
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Well, I put in the HD, and it isn't showing up in My Computer. Is there anything I need to do to get it to read? I'm hearing the grinding sound of accessing the HD more than I used to, and my GFX card fan seems to be louder than usual (Or its just my imagination ).


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Dazzag
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:19
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The 4gb partition sounds like a recovery partition. Lots of makers use them. I have one on my Mesh for example. When the PC boots up you probably get a message at some point saying something like F10 for recovery. Basically using that option uses the hidden partition to reset your computer back to how you first got it. I decided to keep mine as 4gb out of 300gb is nothing, plus it should be a lot faster than reinstalling everything again.

As for reclaiming the lost partition then it is very easy. Personally, on an Acer laptop that did the same thing (4gb out of 40gb was not so good to let slide) I used Partition Magic. Very simple and straight forward and basically eliminated the hidden partition and put the reclaimed space back into the main partition. ie. C: It's also a good piece of software for creating partitions too and basically mucking around.

Cheers

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:29
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I'll check out Partition Magic, thanks.
Anyone know why the HD might not be showing up? Either I need to install something, or it's dead, I would assume..


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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:38
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Well if it's an IDE drive, you may have to set the jumper properly. are you chaining it to another hardrive, or is it on it's own. There's a difference.

Mainly HD's especially IDE drives have the following states

Primary
Secondary
Cable Select or CS

I never use Cable select even hough I have tested it to find that it works. Most drives have a state if not jumped at all. Many drives allow you to read the jump config right on them. Others you may have to look up online. If the drive is now connected on the same IDE cable as your other drive make sure that it's set to jumped as a secondary or cable select. I prefer secondary, as I usually confuse cable selct, I believe the end on cable select is primarym and the middle is secondary.

If it's on it's own IDE port, make sure it's a primary (either jumped or not jumped at all)

The noise you are referring to does scare me a bit. As the drive could be post-toasty. Be sure that your bios is set properly to auto detect drives. Make any changesw necessary. If you have to, try to manually enter the drive specs as a last ditch effort. If none of the above works it could be the drive is bad, or the controller is bad. If it's a WD run wddiag on it. Or whatever they call it now. If it's another make, they probably have there own. Unfortunately if the drive is not being detected by the Bios no tool will help you.

If your not faint of heart you can try the following. Althought this has worked for me in numerous circumstances, it's not something that comes highly recommended. But hey, when you need something to work all caution to the wind, I say.

Sometimes, especially on a drive that has been sitting and was removed under certain conditions, the head can be locked/frozen at a particular spot on the drive. And it won't read properly. Unplug the drive. Grip the HD with controller board facing down, between your thumb and fingers, making sure your fingers aren't extending past the drive. Midway or a bit more is good. Now in a steady yet firm motion, "tap" the hard-drive on a flat surface. Try the drive again.

The tap, takes a little bit of feel. Too hard, and a good drive will be shot. Too soft, and a frozen head will not release. You need to find a sweet spot in between. It needs to be smooth & firm, but not like your trying to put the drive through the desk. I liken it to the force needed to release ice-cubes from a tray (if anyone even has ice-cube trays anymore).

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:45
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It is a SATA Seagate drive. I'm going to check my BIOS and see if it is set to automatically detect. You may be right about a frozen head. It was sitting in my old PC for several months, so that may be the problem as well. The noise I said it was making has stopped, I just hear it do the normal refresh every minute or so, like it always has.
Gonna keep trying!


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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 09:55
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Ok, I went to my BIOS, and sure enough the SATA plug the HD was hooked up to was set to off! So I turned it on, its reading fine, and I have a ton of music that I never listen to anymore.. Ahh, lots of memories... Thanks for your help, everyone!


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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 10:01
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Awesome, Move anything that you want to keep to your other HD!

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 10:03 Edited at: 29th May 2007 10:05
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Yup, got my old PhotoShop..things..on the main disk. And all my old music. Time to get XP on here!
Edit: Once I get XP on there, how do I decide which disk to boot from? The most important question of them all!


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bitJericho
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Posted: 29th May 2007 10:42
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4.6GB is plenty for windows xp. It only requires 2gb max. Of course, you would need to install any extra programs on another partition. You would want at least 4gb on an xp partition to leave some breathing room

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JerBil
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Posted: 29th May 2007 17:44
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Here is a tut on Vista and XP dual booting. If I remember right, you may have driver issues installing xp on a sata drive.

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

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_Nemesis_
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Posted: 29th May 2007 19:05 Edited at: 29th May 2007 19:06
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Grab GParted Live CD. It'll do what Partition Magic can do, but free. I believe it's the gnome frontend for Parted.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

You should be able to resize your Vista partition and create a new partition with this.

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heartbone
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Posted: 29th May 2007 19:11
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You beat me to it _Nemesis_.

I'm unique, just like everybody else.
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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 22:02
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Well, I already have vista on an HD, so I don't need to make more partitions. I was following the tutorial JerBil posted, but when it got the the point where it makes windows recognize both OS's at the boot menu, I got stuck. I have a downloadable version of "Vista Ultimate UPGRADE", so the option in the installer was missing. Could someone post another way to chose which HD to boot from?
Thanks


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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 22:50 Edited at: 29th May 2007 22:52
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Not sure of jerbil's link I'll read it now.

But have you tried this from within Vista

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zenassem
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Posted: 29th May 2007 22:55 Edited at: 29th May 2007 22:58
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Ok I read jerbils link. Seems right. Here is the part that I think is important if everything doesn't go right.

Quote: "
To achieve this, follow the procedure outlined above to restore the Vista bootloader (under "Restoring Vista and Dualbooting").

This allows the system to boot into Vista, and then you can use EasyBCD to create an XP boot entry and boot into that to continue on with XP's installation. (For details on using EasyBCD, also see the section "Restoring Vista and Dualbooting".)
"


If this part is missing in your version of vista, I'll need to think a bit. The problem comes in where it's a bit different than say winxp/win98 dual boot or winxp/win2000. My firs guess was to rewrite the MBR, but jerbils link expressed that's not possible, under vista/xp dual. So I'm finding myself at a loss. Need to read up a bit more.

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 29th May 2007 23:19 Edited at: 29th May 2007 23:23
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When I get to this point:

I do not have the option they say to use, so I can't follow that.
Would it be legal to torrent the full installer and use that? I do legally own a copy of Vista, but it's an upgrade, so I'm not sure if thats legal or not. Thanks for taking time to help me!


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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 30th May 2007 02:57
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Ok, would there be any way to just remove XP and get back to Vista? Its really no fun running a PC without internet and a missing driver disc!


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JerBil
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Posted: 30th May 2007 03:46
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Maybe you could remove the old drive and see if it will will boot from the Vista drive?

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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 30th May 2007 03:48
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Yeah, disabling that SATA connection might work. Good idea.


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Torsten Sorensen
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Posted: 30th May 2007 03:53 Edited at: 30th May 2007 09:07
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Edit: Problem Solved!


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