XP and Vista on same Partition

This is the same story that we had several years ago when XP arrived on the scene. It is NOT the responsibility of Microsoft to ensure that drivers work in Vista - rather it is upto the hardware manufacturers to develop suitable drivers so that they DO work. The reason why the manufacturers don't want to do this is because they want you to buy a new product because this brings them income. In some cases, the 'new' product is virtually identical to the older product except for its colour or some other trivial thing. Indeed, in some cases your older product will work perfectly well under Vista with the drivers supplied with the new product, although they are not usually listed on the website support page for the older product. Many of these companies can develop new drivers for their existing products, but this does not provide them with a stream of revenue. This is all about marketing and revenue generation. Hardware manufacturers have to try to achieve a fine balance between supporting older products and developing new versions. There does come a time, however, where supporting an existing product under a new operating system is not economically viable and in these cases, whilst support is still available for existing systems, no further drivers are developed for that product.
Dwarf

Its the chicken and the egg.

Microsoft builds a OS. They usually test it on standardized hardware like HP. Proliants don't change once released.

Manufacturers sign up as partners to build hardware and software for a given OS. Microsoft went to signed certified drivers on Vista to help with poor drivers. I want them to develop the OS based on newer hardware technology. Anything older than 2 years old should not be the model. I want the best hardware used to build around. It is up to the manufacturers to support older hardware on a new OS, hardware or software. I rather upgrade hardware to support a new OS. Less compatibility issues. I also upgrade all my software to support the new OS. It is not cheap but the workstation runs better.

Your mistake was not backing up your data. I see it on many forums, I don't backup and my hardware or OS failed. I can't get my data back. Do regular backups of your data. Four weeks ago, my $6000 SCSI RAID system on my home workstation failed. My tape backup was from the day before. I lost two Excel files I was working on when the arrays failed. I was able to restore the tapes to another workstation till I could repair my main workstation. Tonight, the new SAS RAID controller and battery arrive along with Vista x64 Ultimate. I also upgraded to a new server board, pair of quad core Opterons (8 cores x 2.66 GHz), 16GB of RAM. I have backups on tape, files on firewire 800 drives, and my second computer. This weekend I will install the new SAS RAID, Vista x64 Ultimate SP1 and test the RAID before restoring my data. I had a 3Ware 9690SA SAS RAID controller that was not compatible with the 8 drive SAS enclosures. 3Ware was too slow on support. I am RMAing it back and ordered a LSI Logic 8708EM2 for delivery today. My workstation can hold 16 SAS drives in four 5.25" bays.

Guys, I hear your argument that it is not Microsoft's responsibility and I think your argument is false. If MS is building a system for home use, do they not have a moral responsibility to target the average user's needs and abilities? They built a system far beyond the capabilities and the equipment posessed by the average user with their three or four year old drivers and printers and faxes, etc. Rather than attempt to make their system backward compatable MS said "let's not do that, it's too expensive for us"; thus shifting the entire burden for compatability to the unqualified user.

They saved some money and created a nightmare for the public. Although XP required some tweaking in the beginning, it was never as bad as Vista.

It's about greed and profit motive, not the customer.

They did target novice home users with Vista. I started on IBM DOS. I remember Windows 1x, 3x, 9x, NT, 2000, Me, XP, XP x64. I used them all. I put it on the user to upgrade hardware and software for a new OS. Old crap should not work well on a new OS. It was never designed for it. If you tried to optimize a new video card driver and a card that is 3 generations back with the same driver, it would work. Technology changes. You need to keep all aspects of your computer matched to get the best from it.

I know many running Vista with no issues. They upgraded for Vista. Added more cores, more RAM, newer hard drives, newer DX10 video cards, and etc.

I want my new hardware to get maximum benefit from Vista x64 Ultimate. I just spent $5000 upgrading for it. You can spend under $700 on a new board, CPU, 3GB of RAM, and a SATA drive for Vista. I would not expect 2+ year old hardware to work well on it. It might work but not fully. It does not support all the features and tweaks.

Vista does target novice users. They put more protections in it. I call it protecting your computer from you. You can't do as many stupid things in Vista like XP.

I run a corporate network. I am used to registry changes. I spent 3 hours upgrading the firmware on my SAS RAID controller, researching BIOS rev upgrades for my Supermicro X7DWA-N server board for Vista x64. I went through all the BIOS, CMOS and SAS RAID configurations to optimize Vista x64. I checked my SAS drives for errors and remove a suspect drive. I will contact Seagate on it.

Vista requires a DX10 video card, more RAM than XP, better CPU, decent hard drive to boot faster. Personally, I think some of the minimum specs are too low. Vista does have free support. Call them.

Well, I missed what you said.....sorry about that.

I would've recommended installing Vista under a Virtual Machine (i.e VMWare) and shared your partition with the Vista Docs and browsed it through Vista via the VM. I've never tested this, so i'm not sure it would've worked.

Sorry you had that issue.

r2rX

You forget that MS OS's are not just sold to novice users, it is the most widely used business OS in existence and they also have to work for them. Vista is more oriented to the novice user than any other previous OS ever has been yet you disagree?? Why...because you messed up and tried to install 2 OS's on the same partition...and you blame MS for your troubles??

Yikes...MS bashing with absolutely ZERO reason

Im sorry marynjon that you have such problems, but you have to realize that MS made a commitment a few years ago to increase the OS security, and to do that they have to eliminate allot of the backwards compatibility, and that trade-off is better for most users (that's why they did it).
MS has to try to please everyone from the IT pro who looks after 5000 machines in his Corporation, and the housewife who's kids need a PC to research their homework...they've done what they can for everyone inbetween. Of course it's not going to be perfect out of the box, nothing this complex ever will be either, and this is a price we pay for MS having to please everyone at the same time.
They've done what they can by making different versions of the OS that are more suited to some user groups and it's basically up to the user to decide which group they fit into best. Different services are enabled for different OS versions in an attempt to more suit that version with the targeted user groups, as are many other aspects of the OS a little different for each version.

But what always gets me is when people bash MS for issues that they cause themselves, and expect MS to tailor their OS's to their personal needs...can't be done for a billion or so users can it now...
BTW, everyone seems to forget that XP was an absolute DOG of an OS and was universally bashed until SP1 (and then 2) were released, and then it suddenly became the "Best and most stable OS" MS ever made...hmmm sound familiar..?

Alright, I have to say I'm sorry again, I don't mean to come off as harsh on you or anything like that, but you have to try and understand that it's impossible for MS to do as you ask, so they do what's best for the greater good in general.
You did cause your own problems by installing XP onto an existing Vista partition, that won't work and you found that out the hard way. If your computer skills are (as you state) average, then in future maybe you should ask in the forum about what you want to do first and see if it's the correct way to do things, especially with more advanced skills like you're trying.

Also, there is no truth to whatever rumor you heard about MS dropping XP support to force users to use Vista, that's completely false. XP's support is scheduled well past 2012 and will probably be extended like they did with W98SE and ME. That's over 12 years support for a product, try to find other things that come with 12 years of support. My 6 year old scanner has no Vista drivers and thats not MS's fault yet I hear tons of people complain about MS when their HP/Dell/Lexmark..etc hardware makers don't write new drivers for every new OS. They don't do that so they can sell you new printers/scanners and stuff, but you don't hear people blame anyone but MS for this.

Dang...got carried away again. 13 years on User help forums and I still get worked up by the things people do and then blame others for.