What do you think would be best?

[ingeborgdot]

I have vista 64 as my main os. Would it be best to run a dual boot using xp pro or to make a virtual machine and add xp pro that way?

[Darthtanion]

Re: What do you think would be best?

Many have had good results using a virtual OS but I guess I'm old fashioned... I dual boot using two hard drives.

[Technogeek]

Re: What do you think would be best?

I've had great luck with VM but that was running XP Pro as my main OS, and either XP or 98SE as my VM. My friend I work with said when he tried running Virtual XP on his Vista machine it would hang up a lot. He's running 32bit Vista Premium.

[Kheldar]

Re: What do you think would be best?

depends on what you want to run

if its for games then dual boot

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What do you think would be best?

After looking around I think I may dual boot but some say I need bartpe. Is this true or can I just install xp and do my stuff and then install vista and go about my business?

[Kheldar]

Re: What do you think would be best?

if you've only got one HD you will need to partition the drive - there are lots of programs that do this, depends if you can destroy all the data on the disk and repartition it or if have to keep the data you might want something like partition magic

[Darthtanion]

Re: What do you think would be best?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

No, you do not need bartpe. As long as you have either multiple partitions like Kheldar mentioned above or have dual drives like I run, you will have no problems. Install WinXP, then install Vista. It has a built-in boot manager and will default your startup to the Vista version, but this can easily be changed.

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What do you think would be best?

I have dual booted and all seems to be working fine but I have a question. On my xp side my drives are different then on my vista side. I loaded xp first so c: was xp. Then I loaded vista later and when I was on my vista side vista became c: at least on vista side. I then formatted E: and my other hdd F. I looked at my drives on vista and here is what they are-
C: Vista
D: XP
E: Music and documents
F: Pictures, videos and programs files
When I go to my xp side the drives are arranged differently.
C: XP
D: Music and documents
E: Vista
F: Pictures, videos, and program files
It seems to be working fine but is this the norm. I tried to arrange it right but this is how it turned out. Anyone care to explain? Thanks.

[Kheldar]

Re: What do you think would be best?

yes that is normal - you've installed your os's so that they are independent of each other (best way of doing it) so your boot partition will always be C drive.

you can (if you haven't installed programs to the other partitions) change the drive letters on your other partitions so that they match in each OS

ie

C: Vista
D: XP
E: Music and documents
F: Pictures, videos and programs files (probably can't shift this one)
When I go to my xp side the drives are arranged differently.
C: XP
D: Vista
E: Music and documents
F: Pictures, videos, and program files (probably can't shift this one)

to get the drive letters the same - boot XP
then shift the vista drive to Q (something not in use), shift the "music & Documents" to E and finally shift the vista drive to D

you will have to redirect your documents folder after this

Use computer management, disk manager to change drive letters.