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dual boot with vista and xp?

post #1 of 4
3/5/07 at 7:14pm
Thread Starter 
I've been all over looking for a good answer to this.
I just got a Asus F3JP
Well u can get them with xp or vista (they were all outta the xp ones)
when u start the machine the hard drive has two partitions one for vista dn the other one as a back up or whatever storage. I tried installing xp on it but now just xp boots and doesnt give me a choice of which OS i want.

I didnt format the second partition i just installed over that second partition.
Should i reformat that partition then install it?
im doing this cause vista is pretty for home work and work etc.
But nasty for gaming sucks up all your system resources.

*EDIT* FORGET IT i found out what u have to go threw to dual boot vista and xp not that worth it to me lol.

Ill go back to xp for now till i get another gig of ram. and till vista gets its bs sorted out.
This notebook came with xp originally and then they started putting xp on it anyway so drivers are availible.
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post #2 of 4
3/6/07 at 6:53pm
rule of thumb for anyone who wants to dual boot is always install the oldest OS first.

Installing the newer then an older OS is much more difficult to get a working dual boot. In Vista's case, it uses a different boot record than xp--installing xp wiped out the vista boot record....I have not tried restoring a VISTA os after an xp install atop it yet, but running the VISTA Recovery environemnt and trying the BootRec /FixMbr, then BootRec /FixBoot might work....dunno
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post #3 of 4
3/7/07 at 4:51pm
I installed Acronis OS selector, and since both the XP and VISTA partitions are primary, and both have Boot Sequences written to them. The OS Selector runs right after the POST and asks which to boot from.
The way I did it was to start with one single partition, upgrade from XP to VISTA, then used Acronis Disk Manager to create another Primary Partition with 100GB of the free space I had, set that partiton as Active and booted to the XP CD. Installed XP, then installed the OS Selector. Viola.
P.S. Gaming sucks hardcore on VISTA so far. Even Internet browsing is slower, and I've applied ever Tweak available. I got a 4.3 Windows Experience Index although the scores are 4.8, 5.9, 5.9, 5.6, 4.3
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post #4 of 4
3/7/07 at 5:14pm
Gameing likely will take some time until drivers mature. Well, let's hope they mature. It sure makes one wonder that the gpu makers have been aware of Vista for a LONG time, and have yet to achieve descent performance.

A lot of people have been blaming the gpu makers, but remember Microsoft redesigned the driver model, supposedly to enhance performance and improve multitasking (required since the interface itself now requires advanced graphic function.

I suppose it is possible that pre-directx 10 gpus are simply not going to be able to handle the requirements of running games and the GUI--for example, gamers often turn off background programs to acheive better performance--but the GUI has become a massive background "program" that cannot be disabled (it can be muted by turning down the eye candy).

I like Vista ok, but I don't play many games. I doubt I would make it my primary OS on a gaming rig until DirectX 10 capable GPUs are out.

Microsoft designed VISTA to be forward looking, but they seem to have taken their eye of the ball when it comes to backwards compatibility. Now, I understand that at some point, they need to do that, but they did not draw a very clear distinction for potential users.
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