Dual boot question

Quick question: I've never dual-booted a system before and I'm interested in dual-booting my Vista with XP. I know they have to be on separate drives (though I'm under the impression that a partition is good enough... is that true?) but my question is: do I need to install separate instances of all of my programs (e.g. Steam, Office, Firefox, etc.) or can I just point XP to their locations and everything will work fine?

Thanks!

Hello Naxself,

You can install XP on another drive or partition if you like, but the programs usually will need to be reinstalled again in XP afterwards. This tutorial below can help with how to install a dual boot with Vista and XP if needed.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/224397-dual-boot-installation-windows-vista-xp.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Brink,

Thanks for the answer. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to re-install everything and here's why: Vista is installed on C: drive but I have all of my programs installed on my D: drive, which is where I would put XP. Having read the tutorial, it looks like it's a good idea to not have XP see Vista (the whole deleting restore point thing) but even if it can't see C:, it should be able to see D:, right? Or am I completely wrong? Hehe...

Thanks!

Yes it will be able to see D:\ just fine.

If you want to have programs installed on both Operating systems.
If you know how to work the registry and app data, you should be able to duplicate & copy it from vista to xp. This is really only needed for shareware programs.
(because of product keys being encrypted into files or registry)

Most programs create app data if missing, and freeware programs "normally" only need registry entries for installation information & file associations.
(Which you can fix manually.)

Thanks, Akira. That sounds promising.

Can't I just install XP on D: (or even E:, if I have to) and then point it at the programs on D: and open them? Wouldn't XP be able to see them and open them? It seems like it should but then again, maybe the registry is fussy.

Thoughts?

Yes you can, but the programs still will not by default be in the Windows Registry of the new OS.
Since they wern't installed on that OS at the time. So it has the same effect as installing XP on a different drive or partition.

Your entire registry is hidden in your sys folders.
The reason programs might not work is because a program might be using the registry to refrence to other files, dlls, product keys etc. A new OS install obviously won't have any of those keys so when you run the program it won't find them, and thus fail.

Freeware normally don't do any of those, so say like Firefox installed on D:\ will still work on the new Windows XP, it will not show up in uninstall but it will run and create any missing appdata. (%userprofile%\appdata\mozilla\)

Naxself,

In my opinion, you would be better off reinstalling the programs in each OS that you want them in to make sure that they will run properly.