yest another dual boot question

Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.

Sorry about these double postings, I was getting an error message syaing my question could not be posted and to try again.
"pmccrackan" wrote:

Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.

Peter: You must create another partition by carving out some free space on either of your physical hard disks. I use BootItNG to manipulate my drives and create free (unpartitioned) space. Once you have some free space set aside (I suggest 15 to 20 GB) boot the computer with the Vista DVD and let it do its thing. It'll eventually come to the place where you tell it where to install Vista and the list it shows you of all your partitions will inclides a listing for the free space you carved out of one of your hard disks. Select that free space and Vista will do the rest. After its complete you will be setup as dual boot. The boot screen will appear each time your startup the computer and give you 30 seconds (default) to select which OS you want to boot into.
HTH!
Doug
"pmccrackan" wrote in message

Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.

Doug, thanks for that, I had already got my installation under way. All the important stuff on my XP Pro has been backed up on a usb drive (just in case) so my installation was successful. I rather suspect I'll be installing XP Pro 64 as my second play OS very soon. I had it up and running "nearly" as good as the 32 bit OS, the only let down was the lack of Palm device support. Not too sure how to proceed with the removal of vista, but I'll wait and read a few posts here, I'm sure there will be few on this matter. Cheers from Peter. "Doug" wrote:

Peter: You must create another partition by carving out some free space on either of your physical hard disks. I use BootItNG to manipulate my drives and create free (unpartitioned) space. Once you have some free space set aside (I suggest 15 to 20 GB) boot the computer with the Vista DVD and let it do its thing. It'll eventually come to the place where you tell it where to install Vista and the list it shows you of all your partitions will inclides a listing for the free space you carved out of one of your hard disks. Select that free space and Vista will do the rest. After its complete you will be setup as dual boot. The boot screen will appear each time your startup the computer and give you 30 seconds (default) to select which OS you want to boot into.
HTH!
Doug
"pmccrackan" wrote in message Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.

I had the same issue: download and install Vistabootpro on XP from http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/ When you're done with Vista, run the app on XP Next time you boot, there's no Vista boot - you're back to the "old XP boot". Before I did my install of Vista I backed up my XP boot files to a folder just in case. As it turned out - VistabootPro worked fine.
"pmccrackan" wrote in message

Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.

thanks ed, I have now installed and wiped out my vista with no problems. That's a very useful utility, vistabootpro. It would have been very messy without it. It was nice to have a little play with vista, but I don't think I will use it until I have to I find xp pro 64 to be a great os Cheers "--ed" wrote:

I had the same issue: download and install Vistabootpro on XP from http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/ When you're done with Vista, run the app on XP Next time you boot, there's no Vista boot - you're back to the "old XP boot". Before I did my install of Vista I backed up my XP boot files to a folder just in case. As it turned out - VistabootPro worked fine.
"pmccrackan" wrote in message Hi, I have two hard drives on my system, both 80GB. I have XP Pro on a 60GB partition as C: on the first drive, the rest of the first drive is unpartitioned space. My second drive has a 20GB partition (F:) for data backup from C:, I also have another 3GB partition (P:) for my virtual memory from my XP Pro on C:, the remainder of the second drive is unpartitioned space (approx 57GB) I want to install Vista on to the unpartitioned space on my second drive, (thats how I have been playing around with XP Pro 64) I see that Vista takes over the system (bit stupid really, having a beta take over the system isn't it?) so when I decide to dump vista where does this leave my XP Pro installation? Cheers from Peter.