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Re: Dual Boot VIsta Ultimate and XP Home
Thanks so much for your explanation; it's starting to make sense to me.
:-)
The laptop belongs to my sister-in-law. It's an Acer 5100-3357. It came
preinstalled with Vista Home Premium, which she detests. I'd like to
create a dual-boot system for her with XP Home. This way, she can use XP
to her heart's content but still have the option to use Vista. Using
Disk Management, I see there are three primary partitions. One is the
hidden 8.79 GB hidden recovery partition. Then there is C:, which is the
boot drive with Vista (51.65 GB). Finally, there's D:, a 51.36 GB data
partition. Since there are no extended partitions, I suppose I could use
Vista's partitioning utility. Or Gparted. So, what's your recommendation
for her particular setup?
"Timothy Daniels" <NoSpam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OYsV%23Rw$IHA.3964@xxxxxx Quote:
> The caution I gave was:
> "Don't use Gparted to add or delete logical drives to/from a Vista-
> created Extended partition, though."
>
> As the "multibooters" site explained, Vista can deal with partitions
> created under the "old rules", but adding to or removing logical
> drives (i.e. logical partitions) from an Extended partition involves
> offsets within the Extended partition, and mixing the "rules" by
> using different partition managers to do so may lead to the apparent
> "disappearance" of a partition. If you look in the Google archives
> of this very NG, there are moans by people who say that their
> precious partition has simply disappeared. So the conservative
> and safe thing to do would be to do *all* partition management
> under the same set of rules. And since "restoring" an image of
> a partition is related in some of its processes to creating a
> partition, one should do that under the same set of rules that
> were used to create the original partition. But since Vista can
> access partitions created under the old rules, my guess is that
> restoring an image or copying back a clone is safe as long as one
> is not creating a new logical drive within an Extended partition.
> Why partitions made by VistaBootPro may not be affected, I
> don't know. Perhaps it was not tested for creation and deletion
> of logical drives within an Extended partition that contained
> Vista-created logical drives. To add to the confusion, there are
> cloning utilities with recent versions that claim compatibility with
> Vista new offset rules. BootItNG and Casper are a couple that
> make that claim. They may or may not work in all scenarios.
> The safest thing to do would to just use something like Gparted
> to create all the partitions because all partitioning utilities can
> deal with the old rules. In the case of my Dell laptop with Vista
> pre-installed, Vista was on a Primary partition with the old offset,
> and a proprietary app was on a logical drive in an Extended partition
> that had the new internal offset. I nuked the entire Extended
> partition
> and kept the Primary partition, and I've cloned and restored Vista
> several times using an old-rules Casper with no problems. If you
> can't tell whether your pre-installed Vista has the old offset or the
> new 2,048-sector offset, and you are willing to re-install Vista, I'd
> say to just re-install Vista in a partition created under the old
> rules.
>
> *TimDaniels*
>
> "Daave" wroote: Quote:
>> Now I am thoroughly confused, Timothy!
>>
>> In another post, you listed these links:
>>
>> Here's an explanation of the problem:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931854
>> Here's the reference that explaines Vista's new partitioning
>> format: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/partitions.html
>> Here's just one How-To that uses VistaBootPro:
>> http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm
>> Here's a How-To that uses Vista's own "bcdedit" command:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529
>>
>> The multibooters link states:
>>
>> <quote>
>> If you only have Vista on your computer and don't mess with
>> imaging or cloning then you have nothing to worry about. However
>> if you do image or clone your drive or have a dual/multiboot
>> configuration with OSes other than Vista, then there are various
>> serious problems that can arise. For now the best solution is to
>> not let Vista create partitions, but do it with previous Windows
>> OSes or with third-party tools.
>> </quote>
>>
>> Okay. Since it's a very good idea to either image or clone one's hard
>> drive, it seems that using Vista to repartition the hard drive is not
>> a good idea.
>>
>> Furthermore, it states:
>>
>> <quote>
>> When installing Vista you should create the partition yourself
>> beforehand and point the Vista install to that partition. Vista is
>> perfectly happy to follow the standard conventions and I have
>> not seen any issues when everything has been done by the old
>> rules using XP compatible tools. Many current apps that worked
>> with XP can be used with Vista, however many might not install
>> inside Vista but they can be used from inside another OS or
>> boot disk. When there have not been any Vista created partitions
>> on the drives I have successfully used several non-Vista versions
>> of partitioning and imaging/cloning tools.
>> </quote>
>>
>> So, it appears that a tool like Gparted might fit the bill. However,
>> you state that doing so may result in other problems! Or perhaps the
>> idea is to let Gparted partition the drive from the get-go, and
>> *then* install the OSes (that is, not to have it do repartitoning
>> after the fact that Vista had already been installed). Am I correct?
>>
>> In the John Barnett link, he advocates using VistaBootPro. But this
>> involves using Vista to repartition the hard drive. So, if the
>> multibooters link is correct, again, problems could arise when
>> imaging or cloning the hard drive!
>>
>> So, is there anything definitive as to the best practices procedure?
>>
>>
>> "Timothy Daniels" wrote: Quote:
>>> Here's my reply to another posting in this NG on using
>>> Gparted to create partitions for both Vista and other OSes::
>>>
>>> On my Dell laptop with pre-installed Vista, I had good luck using
>>> Gparted - a Linux partition manager which runs on a bare-bones
>>> version of Linux (which disappears when you exit Gparted).
>>> Gparted will shrink Vista's partition much further than will Vista's
>>> Disk Management, and it's just as intuitive to use. You can
>>> download a free .zip file to make a live USB stick (as I did) or you
>>> can download a free .iso file to make a live CD. These free files
>>> are
>>> are both available from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php .
>>> Here's some user documentation:
>>> http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/livecd/livecd.htm
>>> (For the live USB, I take all the defaults at startup, except that
>>> I choose "1" - for the "Medium" level of expertise - and then I
>>> tell it NOT to let the startup routine select the graphic driver
>>> auto-
>>> matically, but then I accept its selection and the rest of the
>>> defaults.)
>>>
>>> Don't use Gparted to add or delete logical drives to/from a Vista-
>>> created Extended partition, though. Vista uses a new 2,048-sector
>>> offset from the beginning of its partitions, and the feature can
>>> cause
>>> problems for other partition managers in Extended partitions.
>>>
>>> *TimDaniels*
>>>
>>>
>>> "GrahamH" wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> Could be that when you used vista to do the partitioning and
>>>> formatting XP didnt like it. There is i believe something different
>>>> in the structure of Vista`s partitioning and formating. It may not
>>>> be backward compatible, at least with 3rd party partitoning
>>>> software. Cant rememeber what the difference is but a search on the
>>>> web
>>>> will find it.
>>>> I guess you installed XP on an extended partition/logical drive in
>>>> which case the mbr would have been overwritten by the o/s and
>>>> also system files.
>>>> This is the way i did it, as it then isolates each o/s from each
>>>> other.
>>>>
>>>> I have installed XP home and Vista premium on same drive and
>>>> the way i did it was to create two Primary partitions and format
>>>> ntfs using paragon hard disk manager.
>>>> I installed XP on the second primary and Vista on the first.
>>>> Just make the partition you want to install O/S on active first.
>>>> I also created on the second primary an extended partition and
>>>> logical drive and installed XP again for testing software purposes.
>>>> So i can boot to Vista / Xp / and Xp test.
>>>> You need to use a boot manager like paragon that can select and
>>>> make active either partition depending on o/s selection at boot.
>>>>
>>>> Good luck
>>>> Graham....
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "john p murphy" <jm920@xxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>> news:t8ip94l7ub6ach921ofse3qcv3rjfnd880@xxxxxx
>>>>> Ok, so i am bored last weekend, i am presently running Vista
>>>>> Ultimate,
>>>>> and figured i would install XP HOme editon, i create a partition
>>>>> using
>>>>> vista disk management, format it, put some files on it, partiton
>>>>> was
>>>>> just fine, so i put in the xp disk, reboot, does the standard XP
>>>>> thing
>>>>> copying windows files, now time to reboot, after reboot, i get
>>>>> this
>>>>> message, missing operating system, well i tried to reinstall again
>>>>> and
>>>>> again, so i put in the vista dvd, boot, go to repair, repair fails
>>>>> miserably, so i just figure, new vista install, so i do, get to
>>>>> the
>>>>> part to partiton, etc, what i notice is now i have 3 partitions,
>>>>> C,D,
>>>>> and an unallocated space, small, so i remove all the partitions,
>>>>> and
>>>>> just install vista, no problems, running fine now, what i am
>>>>> curious
>>>>> about is what the hell just went on,????? years ago, i never had
>>>>> problems doing dual boots, xp and 98 , its killing me not knowing
>>>>> what
>>>>> the hell was going on and what happened?? thanks for any help with
>>>>> this, i am losing sleep on this one LOL
>>>>
>>>
>>> >>
>> >
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