Dual boot on G1, with vista preinstalled

Hi, everybody, anyone out there with a G1 and a vista recovery disc who tried to install xp on a second partition?
I am myself trying to do this but no luck so far on make it work...i format the whole drive, partition it, made room even for a Linux distro down the line...but for now, i'm trying to dual boot windows only...this is what i did...install vista first on c:, then xp pro on an f:, primary partition...then, because the vista bootloader messed up, in intalled vista again...now, when i boot up, i have the dual boot screen, but when i choose xp, it says ntldr missing. Other than that, vista works fine...
After some research I found out, that i need to install xp first in c:, obviously, and then vista...that way, vista will recognize xp, and vice versa, and i'd be able to dual boot...my question now is, did any of you guys tried this? I mean, used the recovery disc to install vista on other partition than c:, this being occupied by xp? Because you know the options that you have when you pop in the recovery disc: one partition, 2 partition or the entire hdd...
so, come on guys, am i the only one that wants to run vista alongside xp on a G1? This is an awesome laptop, we should have 3-4 os in it...

 

Using XP CD, make two partitions, install it on one of them, then install Vista on the other. it works.

 

Ok, sounds good...you did this? because, when the xp gets installed il will go in c: no any other partition...then, vista from the recovery dvd, hopefully, i will be able to install it in any partition i choose beside C:...thanks, i will post the results...

 

Just wanted to mention that I've found Vista is fussy about sharing a data partition with XP *if* you're using anything out of the ordinary in terms of ACLs. I was making the transition at the start of the year and found that after using XP, on the next reboot Vista would insist on running a chkdsk on my data partition and often would reset the ACLs to something prohibitive. I can imagine that if your XP partition was visible and you were editing a doc stored there, the next time you went into Vista it might behave similarly. That worries me.

Getting back on topic, there's only one shortcoming to setting up XP and Vista in the manner described by the prior posters. The second OS will be dependent on the boot loader of the first one. I think that explains a bit about why our original poster got into a tough spot, because I know Vista's boot loader is a bit different than NT/Win2K/XP's are. Hence the reason why you gotta do it in a certain sequence.

Want another option? Well, I've always found that the 32-bit Windows type op systems play very well with 3rd party boot managers, whose job it is to hide primary partitions belonging to other systems. This means that when you boot into, say XP, you won't see the partition for Vista, DOS, Linux at all because the boot manager had marked it as hidden. Yes it still shows up in XP's Volume and Disk Manager, but those partitions are listed as 'unknown' and are not assigned a drive letter.

At installation time, you partition a new disk as follows:
Primary partition (1) small, 50MB, this is where boot Manager application will reside
Primary partition (2) medium, 30-50 Gigs, system partition for your 1st OS (if XP or Vista it doesn't matter which)
Primary partition (3) medium, 30-50 Gigs, system partition for your 2nd OS (if XP or Vista it doesn't matter which)
Extended Partition (4) large, uses all remaining disk space. Holds one or more Logical partitions.

When you get ready to install an OS, you set the other partitions as Hidden and tell your OS to load itself onto either (2) or (3) above. This is key because then the OS puts its native boot loader in the right spot and it'll always be there to boot from. Then when you're done, install the Boot Manager software into (1), it'll recognize the other partitions and let you configure a default. Later, when you start your PC the 3rd party boot manager dynamically switches which primary partition is active and bootable. You get total OS autonomy.

BTW, the general idea here is to load your OS and applications on drive C, and keep your work, docs, MP3s, pics from your digi cam, and everything else you care about off that partition, using a data partition for that stuff instead. Extended Partition (4) is the logical choice. That way, if your OS goes south, or you are ready to move onto something else, you can nuke it without having to worry about backing up all the rest of your stuff.

Um, all of the above assumes you have some partition management utility available that you can run stand-alone from a bootable floppy or CD. I've used Partition Magic + Boot Magic (sold bundled together) for more years than I'd care to admit and it's great. I can also say Paragon Partition Manager Professional Edition is good too. And there is one freeware boot manager that's very popular, especially among the Linux community - unfortunately it's name escapes me right this sec.

Good luck!

 

mr bill, that's one hell of a first post. thx for the tips