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XP + Vista

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Hopefully this is the correct area for this topic and if not, please move it to the correct area for my future reference.
My computer is home built so, I figured this would go here.

I currently have Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. I am an FL Studio user (Fruity Loops 8 XXL Producer version).
What I have been told is that there is an issue with Vista + onboard sound cards + asio drivers which will not allow me to record vocals into the sound recorder within FL Studio. I've tried downloading the latest asio4all drivers with no luck.

On XP, I never had an issue with this. Same version of FL.

So, my question is:

I currently have one hard drive on my computer (Vista on it of course)
I have another hard drive that has XP on it but, It was given to me with a illegal copy of XP & it ended up locking me out. It said I had to enter an activation key. I decided to go out and buy another hard drive and a legit copy of XP.

Is it possible to have both hard drives on my computer; One with XP on it and the other with Vista on it?
If yes, how would I go about reformatting the hard drive with the illegal XP on it and installing a fresh XP? It wouldn't let me do anything much less boot up.

Once I have XP installed successfully, How would I switch between the two OS's? I'm only going to use the XP HD for FL Studio and other related tasks associating with music.

I was given options to purchase items that would give me a quick fix to my issue with the drivers but, I can't spend money right now and I figure this would be the easiest way to go since I already have what I need (Hard drive, XP)

Thanks!

More about : vista

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In regards to reformatting the hard drive with the illegal XP on, when you boot your PC, enter the bios and find the option for setting boot devices, and change the primary one to your cd/dvd drive, save changes and exit.

insert your XP disk, and restart. it should come up with a screen saying press any key to boot from cd.

press a key, follow the on screen instructions until you reach the 'select which drive to instal windows onto' screen. select the drive with the illegal windows on it.

format the drive using the ntfs file system, which will delete all data, and follow the on screen instructions to do a fresh install of windows XP.

hope that helps bud,

Cal

Cool, So, I am able to have two hard drives on my computer with diff OS's on them? What about switching between the two OS's?

For my gaming & general use..I'll use Vista..For all of my music productions and other related tasks I'll use XP.

Possible?

Hmm, it's likely possible... should offer you some form of multi-boot option when you install the other OS, and reboot afterwards. Just as long as you don't install the 2 OS's in the same partition, you should be just fine (at least in my opinion anyway). Might want to also look into obtaining some form of multi-boot manager software for Vista.

Or you could consider running something like Microsoft Virtual PC (although I think that might be a bit tricky with your sound though if you did that).
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Homebuilt system Authority

There are many ways to accomplish such a dual boot. I have a laptop with 2 hard drive bays and it came with vista preinstalled on the main hard drive. When I upgraded someone else's drive with a bigger one I took the old one and installed Ubuntu on just it so as to not tamper with the original drive. I have it set to boot the linux hard drive first, and the GRUB boot manager has the option to boot the other drive.

So you could have either the XP drive boot first, edit the boot.ini to boot the vista drive as a second option. You could also have the Vista drive boot first download a program called EasyBCD and add XP drive as a second option. Or you could download any number of linux stuff and install the GRUB boot manager only to (preferably) the XP drive and give it the commands for booting XP or the Vista drive.
Homebuilt system Expert

Unless you are very comfortable with linux, I'd skip the GRUB boot manager. In summary, it does things to the boot sector that windows doesn't like, especially if there's no copy of linux on the system to handle it. EasyBCD is a better suggestion. There are also a number of how to walkthroughs on creating an XP Vista dual boot if you don't want to use a 3rd party program. In the end, you end up with a selection screen after the BIOS finishes loading that allows you to choose an OS to load.
Homebuilt system Authority

I suppose there is a third, more basic way to do it than messing with boot loaders at all. If your BIOS supports it, you can tell it to always show you a boot menu for what device to boot from, then you can just pick which hard drive has the OS you want to run at the time. Or if the BIOS has a 'press this button for boot menu' then you can set Vista to the main booting drive and use that button to choose the XP drive on the occasions you need it.

I actually tried to do it that way first on my laptop, but the boot menu on it only showed the hard drive set to boot first in the BIOS which made it useless.
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