hard drives

if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the second
hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into windows
xp or vista on start up

"chris" <chris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:315D642D-DE74-47A7-9AF8-7B003D9DDA9E@microsoft.com...
> if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
> second
> hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
> windows
> xp or vista on start up

The only way to choose which drive to boot from is to select the appropriate
drive from the bios. In order to dual boot you need to have one drive
partitioned into 2 with an operating system on each one, you will then be
able to dual boot.

so if i did the partition then i dont real need a second drive is that the case

"Mr X" wrote:

>
> "chris" <chris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:315D642D-DE74-47A7-9AF8-7B003D9DDA9E@microsoft.com...
> > if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
> > second
> > hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
> > windows
> > xp or vista on start up
>
> The only way to choose which drive to boot from is to select the appropriate
> drive from the bios. In order to dual boot you need to have one drive
> partitioned into 2 with an operating system on each one, you will then be
> able to dual boot.
>
>
>

The Vista boot loader will do that for you. You can also use a third
party boot mananger or toggle the drives in the BIOS if you want. It
may be prefferable to use a third party boot manager or to turn off and
toggle the drives in the BIOS as there are issues with System Restore
and Vista restore points if you dual boot Vista and XP, see here:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

John

chris wrote:

> if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the second
> hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into windows
> xp or vista on start up

Mr X wrote:

> "chris" <chris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:315D642D-DE74-47A7-9AF8-7B003D9DDA9E@microsoft.com...
>
>>if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
>>second
>>hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
>>windows
>>xp or vista on start up
>
>
> The only way to choose which drive to boot from is to select the appropriate
> drive from the bios. In order to dual boot you need to have one drive
> partitioned into 2 with an operating system on each one, you will then be
> able to dual boot.

You can multiboot operating systems on different hard disks, there is no
prerequisite that the operating systems reside on the same disk for dual
booting to work.

John

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:43:34 GMT, "Mr X" <boomshaka@@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"chris" <chris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>news:315D642D-DE74-47A7-9AF8-7B003D9DDA9E@microsoft.com...
>> if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
>> second
>> hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
>> windows
>> xp or vista on start up
>
>The only way to choose which drive to boot from is to select the appropriate
>drive from the bios. In order to dual boot you need to have one drive
>partitioned into 2 with an operating system on each one, you will then be
>able to dual boot.


Sorry, this is *not* correct. You can certainly dual boot with
operating systems on two different physical drives.

I'm not an expert on dual booting, so I'll leave the specifics of how
to do this to someone else, but I wanted to correct the mistaken
statement above, lest the OP be misled by it.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

"chris" <chris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:315D642D-DE74-47A7-9AF8-7B003D9DDA9E@microsoft.com...
> if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
> second
> hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
> windows
> xp or vista on start up

What you want to do is perfectly do-able and Vista will give you a boot menu
so that you can select which ever OS you want to use.

One thing how ever, each time you boot into XP your Vista restore points
will be deleted by XP.

The information you recieved from Mr X is incorrect.

"chris" wrote
> if i have 2 hard drives one with xp home on it can i put vista on the
> second
> hard drive if so how do i go about it to get a choice on loading into
> windows
> xp or vista on start up

Yes you can. Installing Vista on the second hard drive, if the drive with
XP is in the computer and visible then Vista's boot loader will set up the
dual boot. There are some things to be careful of in this scenario. For
one when you boot into XP, if it can see the Vista partition it will delete
the Vista created system restore points, volume shadow copies and some of
the backups created in Vista. There are ways around this. See this link
for more info on dual booting Vista and XP.

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Also you could do Google web and group searches for dual boot Vista and XP.
There is much information available.

Lastly there are Vista specific newsgroups where this has been discussed in
great detail. Here is a list of them.

microsoft.public.windows.vista.administration_acco unts_password
microsoft.public.windows.vista.file_management
microsoft.public.windows.vista.games
microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_assessment
microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices
microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup
microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail
microsoft.public.windows.vista.music_pictures_vide o
microsoft.public.windows.vista.networking_sharing
microsoft.public.windows.vista.performance_mainten ance
microsoft.public.windows.vista.print_fax_scan
microsoft.public.windows.vista.security

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]