Dual boot XP and Vista 64

[AuroraMike]

I've been running Vista 64-bit for a few weeks now and yes, I knew how much it hates 16-bit apps so I was running WinXP as a guest OS via VMWare in the interim. However that has its own set of issues and I was thinking about getting another small HD and setting up the system as a dual boot with Vista and XP each getting their own drive for OS purposes and then sharing the other 3 drives for data purposes. there's actually a few 32-bit apps that just don't run on Vista either.

Some of it is classic gaming (be it things that use dosbox, gametap/gog.com or just early win32 programs), some of it is some projects I've been working on for awhile and then there's the whole lack of a 64-bit IPSec client in vista by Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint and others (yes yes, SSL I know but we're not allowing tunneled SSL clients yet to our concentrators) and thus I need XP for VPN connectivity as well.

So any feedback on the above? Any gotchas that people have run into? It's a new rig and everything is working fine in vista, there are drivers for it all for XP. I just wanted to see if this was a sane path to follow or if I was dreaming...

 

[BlueAcolyte]

If you install XP (bootloader, files, everything) on a separate drive, there should be no problems... You can boot to different drives through BIOS, if you didn't know.

 

[Ika]

You can even shrink your Vista partition and install your XP partition on that. That's actually what I have right now (with Vista HP x64 and XP Pro SP3). I don't need so much on my XP install, though, so I shrink it with nLite and keep the partition to 6gb. I only need two things that don't run on Vista - my Gamebridge AV1410 and Final Fantasy VII PC.

 

[Scotteq]

About the only real "gotcha' is that XP's boot loader doesn't speak Vista.


Couple ways around this - If you add Vista to an existing XP installation, Vista will recognize XP's presence and auto~magically configure itself. The other way around doesn't work, tho. There's some utilities you can use (EasyBCD and VistaBootPro come to mind), but it's not hard to fix manually:


- On a clean, formatted partition/second disc, install XP


- Then log on to the older operating system and restore the latest boot manager by running the following.

CODEbootsect.exe -NT60 All
bootsect.exe might be in your boot folder of active partition. If not there, then it's on your Vista DVD in boot folder.


- Then create a BCD entry for the older operating system:

CODEBcdedit /create {legacy} /d ?Description?
Bcdedit /set {legacy} device boot
Bcdedit /set {legacy} path \ntldr
Bcdedit /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

You'll need to restart the computer in order for the changes to take effect.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I am trying to install Vista on an XP machine. Full version, not upgrade and when I boot from Vista DVD I go through the little sysprep and then it says the old OS will no longer be used and will be in a folder called .old er something like that. I though it would partition itself and end up a dual boot system?

 

[Juddog]

I'm running Vista 64 / Windows XP dual boot. I just installed Vista first, then installed XP on a separate partition, then rebooted again with the Vista install DVD, chose to repair the boot record, and now I can boot to either one I choose. It was a lot easier than I was expecting. The only thing you have to be mindful of is when you install apps / games, make sure to choose the correct area to install it to, as some will default to a certain drive letter or path. Other than that, everything has run smooth.

I barely use the XP partition though. I played some games on it, and yes it was slightly faster and benchmarked slightly better, but then I couldn't use the increased memory range and was limited to around 3.25 GB in XP.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Finally got it to work. Now all I have to do is back up my files like email etc. and use it on Vista

 

[AuroraMike]

Originally posted by: Juddog
I'm running Vista 64 / Windows XP dual boot. I just installed Vista first, then installed XP on a separate partition, then rebooted again with the Vista install DVD, chose to repair the boot record, and now I can boot to either one I choose. It was a lot easier than I was expecting. The only thing you have to be mindful of is when you install apps / games, make sure to choose the correct area to install it to, as some will default to a certain drive letter or path. Other than that, everything has run smooth.

I barely use the XP partition though. I played some games on it, and yes it was slightly faster and benchmarked slightly better, but then I couldn't use the increased memory range and was limited to around 3.25 GB in XP.

I cant' remember the last time I installed a game on my OS drive so that won't be a problem. The big thing I'm doing this for is some classic gaming and for my IPSec VPN client back to work. I'm not one of those Vista haters (although I changed the vista UI to look like XP, saves a bit of memory actually) but unfortunately Vista is not friendly to 16-bit, early win32 and dos apps of old. And in all of those cases I don't need all my RAM anyways. So it all pans out.

Thanks for the advice and help all, I got this running w/o issue and am much happier than the guest OS solution using VMWare.