Fresh Install, dual boot help.

Question

I have Win XP MCE installed on 2x 250GB HDD raid 0. If I buy Vista Ultimate OEM, can I just create a new partition and install Vista on that so I can have a dual booted system with XP and Vista? OEM will allow me to fresh install on a 2nd partition without all the XP validation right, thats just Upgrade Versions? Will the HDDs being in raid 0 cause any problems in doing this?

If so, how exactly do I go about doing all this as I've never had a dual boot system? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

jmfmvps · Answer

Not being familiar with RAID, I cannot comment on it, so hopefully someone else will help here, but as for dual boot, please have a look at my page here:
http://windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm

You can install an OEM copy on a second partition or hard drive. In fact, you cannot upgrade with an OEM disk, so you have to clean install.

JohnGA8205 · Answer

Sorry didn't read your entire post before. If you plan on dual-booting from 2 SEPERATE hard drives that new Vista bootloader shouldn't be an issue. Just install a third party boot loader and install XP and Vista on the seperate hard drives like your installing a single OS on each drive. The third party bootloader should re-write the MBR so it allows you to choose which OS to boot. WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) validation shouldn't be an issue since it is much more "relaxed" than XP's activation system and only looks at certain parts of the hardware for "major" changes when re-activating. It shouldn't effect you at all.

EDIT:
You also need to go into the BIOS and change the RAID settings so you can disable the array. Never played with the BIOS of a newer Dell desktop but I assume it should be under something called "Performance", "RAID", or something like "Disk Settings". If your using software RAID (nvRAID), just make sure you delete the array before you try to install it. If not, you can always delete the partition on the second hard drive during the XP/Vista install.
Message Edited by JohnGA8205 on 02-04-2007 11:52 PM

Message Edited by JohnGA8205 on 02-04-2007 11:56 PM

davejohn · Answer

akabueno, I have XP MCE installed on a 2x160GB Raid 0 drive and installed Vista Home Premium in dual boot following the instructions here.  I used Partition Magic to repartition the C: drive.   Dave

SLIMavarik · Answer

I installed Raptor drives in RAID 0 (2x36GB=74GB[actual 69GB]), formatted them, then ran the Vista install. When it asked me where to install, I chose the Raptors drive letter and XP MCE was left alone; I have a dual-boot option at start-up with Vista default. The install went smoothly. I ran the install from XP using an update version of Vista, Home Premium (for the Media Center inclusion).

My only problems are finding updated drivers for all my hardware (nVidia still doesn't have an SLI solution for Vista using the nForce4 chipset; ATI drivers for the HDTV tuner card are incomplete) and Outlook 2003 has a problem forwarding attachments that I still haven't solved. There may be more issues to come that I just haven't encountered yet...

Message Edited by SLIMavarik on 02-05-2007 11:05 AM

Windows General

Fresh Install, dual boot help.

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