[Ham-Computers] Win Vista Dual-Boot?

[jeff]

> I'm giving some thought to Microjunk's Win Vista, 

is there any real reason to downgrade to it?



> Is it possible install it as a dual-boot option w/a pre-existing Win XP 
> Home SP2 PC?

My opinion (I haven't tried Vista) is that it will be possible.  I got a
Dell laptop XP machine scandisked, defragged (3X), an open source boot
manager together.  I shrunk the XP partition and installed linux on the
new partition.  Deciding which OS would be loaded was the boot manager's
job and it performed immediately.  Sorry I can't remember the boot mgr's
name.


You have to be careful which OS goes on first.  MS naturally wants their
software to be the ONLY software, so if you install something non-MS, it
will eat the boot sector and will appear as if there never was an MS OS
installed.  

Since I don't know about Vista, you might want to check with others and
verify what actual users have to say.  ALso, keep GOOD BACKUPS, just in
case.  Even if another OS ate the boot sector, it's possible to get it
back or reinstalled.  Also keep some good tools handy.  Winternals has a
ton of utilities for this and other things.

If you like pain, you could try running one of them on a virtual
machine.  Steve Gibson says the MS VM (I believe it's free on the MS
site) works pretty well.  I haven't tried it.

Lastly I'm sure you've seen the `live cd' OSes, like Ubuntu and Knoppix,
which boot and run in RAM, leaving your HD alone.  The same can be
accomplished with a W2k environment (I think).  Do a search for Bart's
PE disk, which contains a lot of great info.


Best of luck and let me know how you make out.  If you have other
questions, put them up.


-jeff
Chief Infection Officer
CEO of Sarcasm
Thermionic Elitist



> As stated above, I have Win XP Home SP2 with all updates as of this 
> writing, in addition to Zone Alarm, Antivir & Partition Magic 8.

never thought about it, but you might have to `do something'  with the
AV tools, as they like to play with boot sectors too.

There is a ton of good info on the web, if you can only figure out
whether it's BS or not.