2 hard drives- I want vista and xp, how do i do it?? help plz

[maverick7]

ok i have 2 500 gig drives and i was wondering how i get xp and vista. I have both operating discs and the only thing that worries me are the drivers. Im confused as to how they work because there are separate drivers for vista and xp... etc

anyways im not really sure what to do overall so if someone could maybe give a step by step that would be great. I am pretty experienced builder but i have never installed 2 operating systems before.

 

[poutrew]

You can put XP on one disk, and install Vista on the other drive. I did this, and the first HD will come up if I do nothing. That is my XP drive, as most of my programs are set to run on XP. If I want the vista drive to boot up, I press F8 and select the drive that has vista on it. Just make sure you know which key to press at boot up to select the proper HD and you should be OK.

 

[maverick7]

why is it f8 to switch drives?? and also will i be able to access the date on either drive?? like lets say i have 1000 songs on the xp drive, will i be able to listen to them while im on the vista hard drive?? like will the data be interchangeable??

also again the drivers- do i load seperate drivers for both the hard drives?? like nvidia drivers for vista when im on that, and then when i load xp i have to then load xp drivers??

 

[DrMaV]

Pretty simple actually, (and yes, you can access both drives from either/or).

First, install XP on to drive 1, as you would normally do.

Second, install Vista, when asked which drive, select drive 2.

You'll then have dual boot, meaning, when you power on your computer, you'll see an option to choose either XP or Vista.

Pretty simple actually.

When you boot into either XP or Vista, you may install drivers appropriately.

I have read about Virtual PC in Vista. So, when in Vista, you can run XP at the same time ... pretty sweet, but never got a chance to try it yet.

 

[maverick7]

so haha again im just clarifying. I install xp drivers in xp and vista drivers in vista?? so for my evga 8800gts 512 mb i install 2 drivers>?

and if i fook anything up, and i need to wipe my drive how do i do that?

 

[maverick7]

also do i have to install for example the logitech cd on both vista and xp??

 

[cfvh600]

so haha again im just clarifying. I install xp drivers in xp and vista drivers in vista?? so for my evga 8800gts 512 mb i install 2 drivers>?

yes

 

[cfvh600]

also do i have to install for example the logitech cd on both vista and xp??

For each operating system you'll have to load it's specific set of drivers. So for your motherboard,video card and any other device that might need it's own drivers, you'll load the xp drivers for xp, and the vista drivers for vista.

 

[bydesign]

One down side is the duel boot effectively kills the system recovery in Vista. It's wiped every time you boot into XP.

 

[rgeist554]

One down side is the duel boot effectively kills the system recovery in Vista. It's wiped every time you boot into XP.

Does it still do that if he installs them on separate drives?

 

[rockstone1]

not sure, but it would explain why I almost had to reinstall vista.

 

[maverick7]

wait what ??? why did u have to reinstall vista

 

[rgeist554]

With dual boot (I'm assuming on a single HDD) w/ XP and Vista will erase the Vista restore points when you load into XP. Basically you can't run a system restore to an earlier point, so if something goes wrong in Vista... it basically means you have to reinstall or fix it "the hard way".

 

[rockstone1]

wait what ??? why did u have to reinstall vista

I installed the beta service pack, went to windows XP when the Service pack destroyed my internet, lost a restore. I didn't because i was able to roll back the service pack, but jeez.

 

[maverick7]

o damn..

but what about with 2 hard drives? wont it be fine then?