Vista - A tip for using the legacy system's disk editor in Vista Setup

You can use the legacy operating system's disk tools even after you have
launched Vista Setup from the desktop and Vista's tools are not available.
It is inconvenient to exit and restart Setup just because you forgot to
create a partition on that new, second hard drive before launching Setup.

I added a raw drive to my test box and restarted XP. At the desktop I
inserted the Vista dvd and started Setup. When I got to the volume
selection screen the second drive did not show in the window. I had
forgotten to prep it.

No problem, I just tapped the WinKey to bring the XP taskbar to the front
and clicked on the Show Desktop icon in the Quick Launch bar. Vista Setup
minimized and I was back on the XP desktop. I used Disk Manager in XP to
create a partition and then clicked on Setup in the taskbar to resume Vista
Setup. To get the new volume to show in the target volume window, I just
clicked Refresh below and to the left of the window. Voila, there was my
new volume.

Unfortunately that does not enable you to format the XP system volume, but
if you are setting up a dual boot scenario with an upgrade product key this
will work to save you the time of exiting and reentering Setup just to do
the task.