dual os machine

I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.

There have been successful reports here of Vista installing on a secondary disk without any issues. But as with any beta software there is a chance of failure, that is why it is important you back any important data before installing or do not install on a production system. Of course, if you install Vista on that computer, it will install its own boot manager and take over, but you will still have access to your XP system under the Earlier Version of Windows boot entry. The boot manager will default Microsoft Windows. http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/andre/archive/2006/06/08/3002.aspx -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message

I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.

I'm confused Andre.
I have a 400Gb SATA hard disc 95% unused and unpartitioned on which sits XP home SP2.
If I install Vista beta, on said drive, it will overwrite XP ? but can I uninstall Vista & revert back to XP?
If I do install Vista on said drive, should I partition it first so Vista sits in seperate partition from XP, if so will I be able to dual boot into the OS of my choice??
I also have an old hard drive lying around , If I use this to install Vista on, at 6gb capacity will it be big enough to run Vista if not what is minmum size hard drive necessary for Vista Beta?
Thanks
Tony P


"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote in message

There have been successful reports here of Vista installing on a secondary disk without any issues. But as with any beta software there is a chance of failure, that is why it is important you back any important data before installing or do not install on a production system. Of course, if you install Vista on that computer, it will install its own boot manager and take over, but you will still have access to your XP system under the Earlier Version of Windows boot entry. The boot manager will default Microsoft Windows. http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/andre/archive/2006/06/08/3002.aspx -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.

If you want the full experience I would recommend 25 gig for vista so you have room to play around with and get all the features out of it...for me I created a seperate partition to put vista on and xp has its own partition and all my important files have another partition that way no matter what I do my important stuff is safe...and the dual boot is working flawlessly but as stated it is beta so you never know how it will behave on one machine from the next
"Tony P" wrote:

I'm confused Andre.
I have a 400Gb SATA hard disc 95% unused and unpartitioned on which sits XP home SP2.
If I install Vista beta, on said drive, it will overwrite XP ? but can I uninstall Vista & revert back to XP?
If I do install Vista on said drive, should I partition it first so Vista sits in seperate partition from XP, if so will I be able to dual boot into the OS of my choice??
I also have an old hard drive lying around , If I use this to install Vista on, at 6gb capacity will it be big enough to run Vista if not what is minmum size hard drive necessary for Vista Beta?
Thanks
Tony P


"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote in message There have been successful reports here of Vista installing on a secondary disk without any issues. But as with any beta software there is a chance of failure, that is why it is important you back any important data before installing or do not install on a production system. Of course, if you install Vista on that computer, it will install its own boot manager and take over, but you will still have access to your XP system under the Earlier Version of Windows boot entry. The boot manager will default Microsoft Windows. http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/andre/archive/2006/06/08/3002.aspx -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.

Yes, you definitely must have a separate big enough hard drive or partition. Also, don't go trying to move the drive or partition around after installing. That would cause different drive letters to be applied and Windows [anyversion] doesn't like that.
"Tony P" wrote:

I'm confused Andre.
I have a 400Gb SATA hard disc 95% unused and unpartitioned on which sits XP home SP2.
If I install Vista beta, on said drive, it will overwrite XP ? but can I uninstall Vista & revert back to XP?
If I do install Vista on said drive, should I partition it first so Vista sits in seperate partition from XP, if so will I be able to dual boot into the OS of my choice??
I also have an old hard drive lying around , If I use this to install Vista on, at 6gb capacity will it be big enough to run Vista if not what is minmum size hard drive necessary for Vista Beta?
Thanks
Tony P


"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote in message There have been successful reports here of Vista installing on a secondary disk without any issues. But as with any beta software there is a chance of failure, that is why it is important you back any important data before installing or do not install on a production system. Of course, if you install Vista on that computer, it will install its own boot manager and take over, but you will still have access to your XP system under the Earlier Version of Windows boot entry. The boot manager will default Microsoft Windows. http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/andre/archive/2006/06/08/3002.aspx -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.

On 6/30/06 3:07 PM, in article 845827EF-BCBE-4FAB-B27C-4DE40612E867@microsoft.com, "rschatz" wrote:

Yes, you definitely must have a separate big enough hard drive or partition. Also, don't go trying to move the drive or partition around after installing. That would cause different drive letters to be applied and Windows [anyversion] doesn't like that.
"Tony P" wrote:
I'm confused Andre.
I have a 400Gb SATA hard disc 95% unused and unpartitioned on which sits XP home SP2.
If I install Vista beta, on said drive, it will overwrite XP ? but can I uninstall Vista & revert back to XP?
If I do install Vista on said drive, should I partition it first so Vista sits in seperate partition from XP, if so will I be able to dual boot into the OS of my choice??
I also have an old hard drive lying around , If I use this to install Vista on, at 6gb capacity will it be big enough to run Vista if not what is minmum size hard drive necessary for Vista Beta?
Thanks
Tony P


"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote in message There have been successful reports here of Vista installing on a secondary disk without any issues. But as with any beta software there is a chance of failure, that is why it is important you back any important data before installing or do not install on a production system. Of course, if you install Vista on that computer, it will install its own boot manager and take over, but you will still have access to your XP system under the Earlier Version of Windows boot entry. The boot manager will default Microsoft Windows. http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/andre/archive/2006/06/08/3002.aspx -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message I have a machine running XP Pro on which I rely.
How easy and safe is it to do the following? Add a hard disk -- put Vista Beta on that disk -- and have a choice of which one to boot? Can I rely on Vista Beta to leave my XP disk COMPLETELY UNTOUCHED? The two OSes don't even need to be able to read each other's disks.



As to the size of HD for installation of Vista:

The Microsoft documentation states that there must be a minimum of 20gb free on the drive just to install Vista. It needs this to be able to unpack its installation files. Once Vista is installed, it will only need a minimum of 10gb. But this won't leave enough room for media files (especially larger ones like videos of various kinds) and program files.
So, a 6 GB HD is not large enough, since it won't meet the minimum of 20gb just to install, and it is not large enough to run the OS anyway.
Plan on at LEAST 40gb for a reasonable HD.
Face it, my friend: Vista is a HUGE OS, and needs HUGE amounts of memory and HD space. It's definitely not an OS to play around with. It's a professional OS for developers and other professionals (first), and for general home users (second).
I would plan on these BASICS:
1) The LATEST, most powerful logic board (motherboard to Wintel users) you can purchase which is Vista-capable. 2) Pentium 4 CPU, preferrably 64bit or Dual Core (a FAST, FAST one, not a Celeron, as in "stay away from cheepie Dell $599 machines") 3) A MINIMUM of 2gb FAST ram ( I mean FAST ram, not SLOW ram. In fact, get the FASTEST ram your money will buy and your machine will allow). I don't advise doing any over-clocking, either, unless your CPU and logic board (motherboard to Windows users) are designed for over-clocking. 4) A late-model CD (at least 32x) or DVD (at least 8x) 5) 19" LCD (best quality you can afford) 6) a newer (as in less than 1.5 years old) keyboard and mouse. 7) and last but definitely NOT least, a 250gb HD (7200rpm). (VERY CHEAP right now. Get one for about $199 (probably less)
Heck, man, just buy an AlienWare game machine for 3 or 4 grand, and you will probably get a fair machine for Vista. Get the BIGGEST, GAUDIEST, FASTEST, HOTTEST bazomba you can find. 'Cause that's what you'll need.
Or, buy either a new Intel MacBook Pro 15" or an Intel iMac 17"(a 20" would be better of course) for less than $1495, with memory slots "maxed out". Either of them will run Vista quite well in a BootCamp partition on your Apple HD, since they are both pretty much the same machine. By the time Vista goes gold, BootCamp itself will include the ability to dual boot with Vista. It's already able to be installed on an Intel Mac with little or no trouble, but currently, you must delete the EFI partition on your Mac disk before it will install. This, of course, makes it impossible to return to OS X, if you decide Vista is not for you, without reformatting your entire HD and reinstalling OS X. (NOTE: Vista will NOT install on a Mac disk without OS X installed, since a Mac has no BIOS (just a little boot-loader ROM and the TPM chip.) (Another NOTE: I advise creating a FAT32 partition rather than an NTFS partition, since you won't be able to drag and drop between OS's, since NTFS is totally invisible to OS X.)
Eventually, Microsoft will enable EFI partitions in Vista. But that's another story...
Or, build your own, if you're that type. But it MUST be put together very "tightly", or it won't use its "stuff" right.
And FORGET about parts and software which are NOT "Vista-capable" (and I mean not "just Vista-compatible").
I know this might sound daunting to a home user, but that's the way it is.
Now, some will say "that guy's crazy!!! I did this...or, I had that..., and Vista ran ok". Those guys are trying to "sell" the IDEA of "Vista" ("OOOH!!! AAAH!!!, the LATEST and GREATEST...blah, blah, blah"), not the OS itself, which is quite a different matter. And Microsoft will sell you whatever your money will buy. They don't care if it works for YOU (oh, yeah, they SAY they do, but really, do they? Think about it. They just care that it works for SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW. And it does, as is evidenced by all the estatic posts and news blats everywhere.
Personally, I advise all home users to stay away from Vista altogether (maybe the Home version will be ok, with Windows Media Center, but not the Pro Desktop), unless they plan on buying or building new machines (or have already).
Anyway, that's my take... Now, blast away, folkies.....
Donald L McDaniel Please reply to original thread ===========================================