How to run Vista and XP on different drives on the same computer

[MortimRex]

OK! Here's what I'd LIKE to do.

Keep my old XP on one drive and install Vista on another drive in the same system. i don't however want to go through a dual boot process or anything. What I want to be able to do is pick the boot drive on boot-up, which my mother board allows and choose the OS by choosongthe drive.

The reason I'm doing this is because I have a buisness intalled on the XP drive and I want to test run Vista for stability before I move completely over.

My concern is that each of the drives will see each other after boot up. Will this affect anything that you can think of or can I force each OS not to see the other drive when I do boot up. If so...how!?

Thanks!

REX

 

[mylok]

if your motherboard allows you to select the boot drive and it does not disable the non-selected drive then both drives will be available to either OS. you would just be dual booting with out using MS's bootloader (if this will even work). I currently dual boot between XP and Vista and just use MS's boot program to select which one to boot into (i have xp set as the default and have to select vista if I want to boot into vista).

I have not run into any problem just dual booting. my boot drive for vista is listed as C: when I am in vista (the drive that xp is installed to is listed as D: when i am in vista). when I am in xp the vista c: drive is set as my D: drive.