Dual OS Confusion

[abhijith]

I have an AMD Phenom 9550 processor and 2GB 800Mhz RAM and 250GB HDD. I play games on my PC. I currently have Vista Ultimate installed on C. I have 9.15GB free on C. I want to install XP also for dual OS. Can I install it on C? Assuming that Vista uses 30% of my memory individually and XP uses 20% then if I have dual OS will that mean that if I am using XP or Vista then 50% of my memory will be in use? I want XP because games have higher system requirements in Vista. So what do you recommend I should do? I only have 3 other partitions left so if I can't install XP on C then please give me steps to make another partition of maybe 10GB/15GB? Thanks in Advance..............

 

[notherdude]

No, not on C, unless you are talking about a virtual machine which is no good for modern gaming so I assume you don't mean that. You can't have twp OS on one partition.

You can use Vista's computer management console to create a new partition but with only 9 gig free this seems like it is cutting it too close on free space to me. For one thing you will need more space to install games on the XP partition and new games take up massive space - like 4 to 8 gig per game. You need a lot of free space on a Vista drive - I doubt seriously the system will even let you create a new partition with only 9 gig free.

Your best bet is to either free up a lot more space or buy another hard drive.

As for memory, you can only run one OS at a time so you will have all of your memory available for each OS. Memory gets flushed out and freed up after each shutdown.

Vista runs games just fine, the frame rates have equalized, it is unlikely many if any games are going to suffer much running with two gigs of RAM but if some do just buy more RAM.

Steps for a new partition:

control panel>computer management>storage>disk management> right click on the drive and select 'shrink volume'

But don't do it with so little space free.

You also have another problem. If you install XP after Vista is already installed you will loose your Vista boot configuration and you will have to run a special utility to hopefully get it back. XP cannot set up a dual boot with Vista but Vista can set up a dual boot with XDP, so we usually install XP and then Vista.

 

[abhijith]

I have lots of free space on the other drives like somewhere around 50GB free each. I will be able to use all my other drives fine in Dual OS right? I cant afford more RAM now. I will create another partition for XP from one of these. Cant I install XP on a new patition of 15GB and then install the games on another partition?

 

[notherdude]

I have lots of free space on the other drives like somewhere around 50GB free each. I will be able to use all my other drives fine in Dual OS right? I cant afford more RAM now. I will create another partition for XP from one of these. Cant I install XP on a new patition of 15GB and then install the games on another partition?

Sure, if the 15 gig partition is on a different drive and won't be running your Vista drive low on space then no problem, like you say you could put XP on one partition and install the games to another. I didn't realize you had the additional drives. All your partitions will be usable by both OSes.

Since you have additional drives you should install XP on a different hard drive than the Vista install. This will save you any hassle from installing XP after Vista. Instead of letting the OS set up a dual boot menu for you simply use your BIOS pop up boot menu to select a drive to boot from.

1. Physically remove Vista drive

2. Install XP to another hard drive

3. Put Vista drive back in.

4. Your system will now boot from the hard drive designated as the 'first drive' by the BIOS. This you can change by going into BIOS setup.

5. But instead of fooling with BIOS setup there will be a function key you press immediately after power on, f8 for example on Asus boards, which brings up a handy boot menu listing all of your drives. All you need to do is remember which OS is on which drive. Now you have a dual boot system with no flaky boot config file to get lost or corrupted. With OSes on two separate drives if one drive goes down you can always boot from the other.