dual booting xp and vista

EricM

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i recently just purchased vista and want to dual boot it with xp but the drive xp is on has only one partition and i do not want to change that. so i got another empty hard drive which i want to install vista on. my question is what issues will there be with two OS's if i have both drives connected. and would there be any problem with disconnecting the drive with xp on it whenever i want to use vista and vice versa?
 
There shouldn't be a problem with removing the drive with the os your not going to use (as long as you do it with the computer off of course). But it would probaly be eaiser to use the os menu to choose what os you want to use. I have vista and xp on seperate partitions on the same hdd and it usually boots into vista but if I want to use xp for something (like games or something else that is hardware intensive) then I just keep hitting up at boot until the os chooser shows up and pick "older version of windows".
 
Since you gotta install XP first, Visat will use the bootloader (or whatever it is) on the XP HDD, so if you take out the XP HDD, you can't boot. You can still boot XP if you take out the Vista HDD. If you are going to disconnet the XP one later on, just take the XP one off when you get Vista, and just use Vista... If you need them both, you will have to add the bootloader to the Vista HDD as far as I know. I just had a dual boot system with XP/Vista Lite and took out the Vista one and put it in another PC and it said there was no OS on it... I didn't need it, I just wanted to try it out, and I needed the HDD for a different system with XP anyway.

Hope that made sense...
 
it kinda makes sense. where is this bootloader located? and if i just keep the xp drive connected when installing vista on the other hdd will it do anything to the other drive with xp on it? i am going to back up my files anyways.
 
Eric- backing up files is a good idea. Installing Vista second is also a good idea. If you install XP second, its bootloader will screw up and not recongize Vista and essentially just take over all other bootloaders on your PC. Installing Vista SHOULD recognize your XP partition and allow you to choose upon startup. XP will be fine with running Vista on a different hard drive too, as long as they both understand their letters (who is C: drive etc).

also, you wouldn't disconnect the other hard drive every time you want to use one. the two can run alongside eachother pretty well, you'll probably even be able to access files from the other HD. Setting up a shared home directory so that your Vista and XP basically have the same personal settings when you logon is also an option.... but i'd say start with installing the two together first :p

If you're looking for a bootloader that doesn't suck, GRUB is SO much better, but it does require some more configuration
 
so i need a third-party bootloader? i just cant install vista on an empty drive and when im done that connect the xp drive back? i have never dual booted before so i am a bit confused as of what i have to do. might i add i have xp installed already on my computer and partitioned it for the whole drive.
 
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