Best way to deal with applications with two installs

[Jman13]

Well I just installed Vista x64 RC1, and it's running quite nicely so far (no obvious slowdowns, working well.) However, I obviously do not have any of the registry data for my applications that are installed in XP. Is there a good way to get both OSes to recognize the same install? It's not a big deal with small things like Firefox, but I really don't want to do two Photoshop installs, and other large programs (and games). Is there a good way to do this?

 

[TG2]

To get each OS to see the registry settings for all the installed applications, you need to install the apps into each OS.
Only other way around it is to just use one OS for everyday stuff

 

[Jman13]

Will I screw anything up if I install the application over itself when doing the install in Vista? By my estimation, the folder with the app will end up with the same files, with just the OS required files being different, then referring to the same folder with each OS. Good idea or easy way to screw things up?

 

[AlucardX]

you have plenty of hd space, keep both installs and applications mutually exclusive.

pc games are probably the only thing i usually don't have problems sharing between two Windows partitions

 

[Jman13]

If only I really did have plenty of HD space. Currently, I'm OK on HD space for the Vista install, which is good (I've got about 70GB on this drive), but most of my other drives are pretty full. I'm a photographer, and I have 90GB of just photos on my computer, and that's duplicated on the external backup drive. Anyway, I'll keep the apps separate. I guess if I find myself running so many things in Vista, then it's working well enough for me to probably abandon my XP install at that point anyway.

 

[htne]

I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I will. I installed Vista on a 2nd partition, logical drive in an extended partition. When I boot XP from the first partition, the drive letters are:

C: first partition, with XP installed
D: 2nd partition, with Vista installed

But when I boot Vista, the drive letters are

C: 2nd partition, with Vista installed
D: first partition, with XP installed.

So "C:\Program Files" will be a different directory, on a different partition, between the two operating systems.

 

[Jman13]

Interesting. My XP install has been on E since I did it, so when I installed Vista on my previous C drive, it just kept itself as the C drive. So right now I've got Vista on C and XP on E.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Jman13
Will I screw anything up if I install the application over itself when doing the install in Vista? By my estimation, the folder with the app will end up with the same files, with just the OS required files being different, then referring to the same folder with each OS. Good idea or easy way to screw things up?

Should work fine for most programs.