Vista Ultimate Question?

[Sir. S.A.S]

Hi

My Setup which works 100% perfectly is running xp pro x64. I was wondering if i buy a western digital 250gb and install OEM x64 Vista Ultimate Will it dual boot properly without interfearing with my xp set up?

Second question my x64 came with a coupon for a vista x64 buisness upgrade. The reason im not using this is i dont want my xp install over ridden. I was wondering can i apply for it and just keep it till vista comes mainstream? Or will it not let me register Xp pro again till i put vista on it?

Thanks for any help
Regards
S.A.S

[Reeps]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

it won't dual boot with out adding it to the boot.ini i believe...as for you keeping vista without upgrading yes you can, I got an ultimate version upgrade and its just sat here doing fook all as i refuse to install the crap..lol

[Sir. S.A.S]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

well i did some googling and it looks possible.

http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm

I dont have to worry about the partitioning my xp drive as im putting it on to another drive. But during beta it worked Vista the XP but ive never tried it XP then vista.

[Reeps]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

if xp and vista is on the same drive then yes it'll dual boot..sorry i thought u were adding another drive so 2 drives an os on each and wanted to dual boot.

[Sir. S.A.S]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

emmm thats what i plan to do:

200gb WD: xp pro x64 (and later on in life do my free upgrade to buisness x64)
160gb sansung: storage and backups
250gb WD: Vista ultimate (yet to be installed or bought)

Im hoping these will dual boot together.

[Stormy{CAN}]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

1. It will dual boot just fine. Just make sure that you install Vista to the correct hard drive.

2. Vista doesn't have/use a boot.ini, it uses what is called bcdedit.

3. If you decide you want to change the boot order you have to do it from within Vista, and not XP. If you do decide to change the boot order (XP as first/default boot, this,

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_100.64.html

provides a nice GUI and is easy to use instead of mucking about manually.

[Sir. S.A.S]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

superb all i have to do now is buy the Harddrive and vista

[camper.]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

Keep in mind that Vista's bootmgr will take ownership of our HDD. Personally, I'd use GRUB and chainload it. BEFORE YOU INSTALL VISTA, mark your XP partition as inactive (i.e. unable to boot), or Vista will install bootmgr to that drive, and piss you off royally (for obvious reasons, it's better to have the original ntldr boot sector on the XP drive and have it chainloaded from Vista's boot manager).

But as I say, use GRUB. Far better than either. If you follow my instructions, you can simply set up GRUB to chain load either XP or Vista, and it's a zillion times faster than vista's bootloader. The main advantage is that you get a command shell, which bootmgr doesn't give you, and you can basically boot whatever the hell you like in an emergency.

Don't know why I'm rambling on about boot managers, but I hope it helps...

[Stormy{CAN}]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

Actually using Vista Boot pro that isn't a problem. With it you can change the preferred boot OS (make XP the first boot instead of Vista), change the amount of time to select which OS (default is 30 seconds), or delete the Vista bootloader completely (done this myself after testing Vista, best to do it from in Vista and not XP).

One good thing about the Vista bootloader is that it makes it easier to access Safe mode when you are dual booting, no need for hitting F8 during boot as there is an option to access Safe Mode on the bootloader option screen.

[ZDOOBY]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

isn't there a trick that lets you use an upgrade version of vista for a full install

i think i heard you install it with out your cd key (or what ever its called) then go back and do it again but the second time use the cd key?

[Sir. S.A.S]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

there is a trick to do it but i can see MS stop u doing that. I know and done the trick for a mate but not doing it for my self.

The only boot manager im using is Vistas. Lets say ive had a bad experience with boot managers . And i didnt mind the boot loader of vista as in the betas i found it to be more than sufficent!

[BoloMarkXXX]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

Go here for your x64 XP needs great community.

http://www.planetamd64.com/

[Sir. S.A.S]

Re: Vista Ultimate Question?

yeh went there when i first had problems find anti virus etc.

But now many thanks to that site my OS is running brilliantly!