how to dual boot xp and vista 64 with p-7811 fx with 2 internal hardrives

Hello. i'm new to this forum and i believe this site is the best site to ask help.

now, i have the p-7811fx with vista installed in it(64 bit)

i believe this laptop can support 2 harddrives so here are my questions:

a) which hard drive is excellent for this laptop? im thinking of getting a 500gb one or 320gb

b) i love crysis and FEAR. i heard xp plays better than vista. is this true? if it is, what xp edition should i buy and install on the second hard drive? how many framerates would i be getting if i use xp? and what is the xp gaming edtion i've been hearing about?

c) how to install the xp OS on my second hardrive? after i placed the 2nd HD and boot my computer, what is the next step? can you help me?

d) after installing XP, i heard there are issues on sound drivers. would you advise me on this?


please advise. im planning to buy 2 harddrives and dual boot it on each hard drive

 

I think that all your answers will be answered if you do a little search here in Gateway forum. Here are many threads, start from here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295516

 

google :dual boot vista xp

the key is inserting the xp cd to the drive and booting from it.

 

okay.... but it does not tell me how to dual boot thru adding HD. it tells me to partition etc etc......

also, it does not even tell me if xp plays better on those games...

how about answering my questions instead of giving me links(i read those links so please, dont call me a lazy person)

it does not even tell me which OS is better(xp 32 bit or 64 bit).

 

and please,no "google this or that" answer. just get straight to the point. not trying to be mean here. i just want straight to the point answers. that is why im in this forum,right?

 

I think newegg has a 500GB notebook drive, on the canadian site it was $180, so im assuming on the US site it would be cheaper.

Its as easy as a normal re-install, except you dont delete the old partition. You use say, one drive for XP and the other driver Vista.

 

There is no difference. Seems your problem is not understanding HD partitioning and formatting. I would tell you to Google "how to partition HD" but you told me not to.

A hard drive with 2 partitions looks like 2 hard drives to the OS. So studying up on partitioning is the way to go.

 

Methinks people aren't getting the point.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7813_102-0.html?forumID=133&threadID=276495&start=0&tag=forum-w;forums06

"Make sure to install XP first, you will need a SATA driver on a floppy disk before you can install XP, it should be on the motherboard driver disk.
If you are using a new motherboard it will possibly have an option in bios to set the SATA drive in PATA (IDE) compatability mode, this remove the need for a SATA driver for XP.
Install Vista on the second drive after XP and Vista will detect prievious OP system and create a dual boot option.
I would create two partitions on at least one of the drives to store Documents, Photos and Media files. You can then point both OP systems to the same directories so you access them from either system without the need for duplicate folders."

My only other advice would be to VLite Vista and NLite XP and integrate, at the very least, the F6 drivers.

Some other links (pertaining to EasyBCD, a program that might help you):
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1121
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=832

 

I'm dual booting XP on a second drive. It wasn't an easy process, but everything's working.

First, I'd recommend getting another of the same 200 gig Segate. They're fairly cheap and when you eventually dump XP (or Vista ), you'll be set for Raid. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I have the bios boot order to DVD/Vista drive/ XP drive, and made the drive letters on the XP drive come after the Vista ones.

I didn't need a lot of space on the XP drive, so I put it in about a 10 gig partition. You'll need to download all the XP drivers. I put it them on one of the other paritions for convenience. I then slipstreamed the SATA drivers onto an XP install disc. I had XP SP1 to work with. Be careful that you don't slipstream SP3 by doing the integration on a Vista computer-- there's a strange glitch that makes it impossible to enter your XP password if you do this.

Do not unplug your Vista drive when intalling XP. I've read that this, while logical, really messes things up. You'll also want to get Easy BCD (free download) and read their website / forums on dual booting XP. After running Easy BCD (which will fix the boot process and allow you to get back to Vista) and installing the XP drivers you should be set for proper dual booting, except for one last thing. You'll need to hide the Vista drive from XP, since the latter will overwrite any restore points that Vista creates. This can be done through a simple registry hack.

The other thing I ran into was that my router was using WAP security and when I installed XP SP1 it didn't recognize that and I couldn't connect to the internet. Upgrading to SP3 fixed the problem. The other very strange thing that happened was my internet connection still didn't work and the DNS information appeared to be missing. It took forever to figure out why, but XP added a "network bridge" in the Network area that needed to be deleted.

Also see:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295516&page=5
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Installing+XP+After+Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185


- Frank

 

there is no reason to install xp first, especially when most machines comes with vista preloaded.

one thing to watch is that if xp is allowed to access the vista partition it will make system restore on vista useless (vista will invalidate all restore points that were accessed by any other OS) so each time you will boot to xp it will practically erase your vista system restore saves .

 

so i just install the second HD(lets say seagate 200gb) on my laptop, turn on my laptop, and placed the install xp cd then it will automatically install?

 

wait, i have another question. what the heck is windows xp gaming edition? is this a fake or something????

 

Windows XP Gamer Edition was a user-modded install of XP slimmed down to 16 stock running processes by default. It's not officially sanctioned in any way, shape, or form, and similar results can be achieved by using nLite.

 

nlite? is that the program you use to burn or merge with the xp iso and burn it to the disc?

 

ok, before i dual boot(using partition or physical hard drive) should i format my HD first before anything else?

 

what destruya, ftlum and royk50 are saying are good points. I myself have tried dual booting XP SP3 with Ubuntu. However I did that on 1 drive with the partitions set at: NTFS 120gb/ EXT3 76 gb / SWAP 4gb (should be double ram but i wanted to save 4 gb and sizes were approximate). Then I installed XP first. After I got that working (including using nlite to slipstream the f6 drivers) I installed ubuntu (actually mythbuntu). That automatically detected the xp install and the boot loader has the option to boot to the xp partition. Anyone else did it this way?

 

nLite is a program which is used to strip unnecessary crap from XP and make a truly "automatic" install. It allows you to pre-check all the boxes and fill in all the blanks. One word of advice is to not run it in Vista, since weird things supposedly happen on the install. You copy the entirety of the Windows XP CD to a directory on your computer, let nLite find it, and then you can remove components, slipstream drivers, add program/hotfix packs, etc., etc. etc.

Since you're asking me what it is, I'd highly suggest you type in "nLite guide" into Google to find a guide on how to use it.

But once you're finished editing XP, nLite *does* have a "burn image to disc" option at the end.

 

i have another local harddrive on my laptop which is formatted already.i rebooted my laptop with the 64 bit xp disc but after the setup of windows, it gives me error msg with blue screen saying check my hd if this is first time seeing msg, pls shut down or sumthin.can anyone help

 

Installing XP after Vista trashes the Vista boot loader. Easiest way to fix it is with VistBootPro. Refer to the following guide.
http://lifehacker.com/software/dual-boot/dual-boot-windows-xp-on-a-pre+installed-vista-pc-248936.php
Be sure to go here:
http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/about88231.html

Not sure why XP is not booting. During boot do F2 and select HD to boot.

 

WoW, I'm getting a new computer today (Sager 9262) and I'm going to set up a dual boot as well. Seems to be that there are SEVERAL ways to do this. Gonna have to educate myself before diving in.

 

ok i dual boot vista and xp however when i go back to xp, it says system error. when i boot up the disc, it gives me commands prompt and admin password
i got no admin password added on xp.pls help

 

explain what you did

 

ok,i succesfully installed the xp disc 32 bit with slipstream,righ(updtated drivers too in xp)? after, i dual boot vista using vistaproboot then when i restart the computer and chose earlier version of windows(xp for short), it says error msg lplease boot disc restart computer press r for repair etc... and info says file might be missing or corrupted. is there any way to fix this aside from booting the disc xp again, wait for 30 min to repair then update the graphics card again