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    Vista Upgrade...dual boot?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by davebrennan, Feb 27, 2007.

  1. davebrennan

    davebrennan Notebook Geek

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    I just ordered my Vista Upgrade, but wanted to know if anyone had tried installing it in a second partition so they could dual boot into either XP or Vista? Not even sure if this is possible with the Vista upgrade, but thought I'd ask. I had a PC with 2000 and XP back when they launched XP and it worked fine.

    I'd like to get my feet wet with Vista first before deciding to go for it permanently.

    Any thoughts?
     
    davebrennan, Feb 27, 2007
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  2. Fastgun

    Fastgun Newbie

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    Hi,

    it is not possible to dual boot by installing the Vista upgrade, it is however possible to install XP on two different partitions (Dual Boot with XP) then upgrade the second XP installation to VISTA.

    HTH
     
    Fastgun, Feb 27, 2007
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  3. davebrennan

    davebrennan Notebook Geek

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    Kind of a pain, but if the disc is only an "upgrade" I see how it would be necessary.

    Is there any way to do this with the OS that came on my ThinkPad? There's no disc, it's all just an image on the hard drive, right? How could I go about installing to a new partition? (It wouldn't violate the EULA IMO, since it's not like I'm distributing it to someone else.)
     
    davebrennan, Feb 27, 2007
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  4. mjacob

    mjacob Notebook Geek

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    As soon as I got my new T60, I did a low-level format of the entire drive, recovery partition and all. Then I made 3 new partitions: 20 GB, 20 GB, and 80 GB. I installed XP Pro onto the first 20 gig partition, and then I installed Vista Ultimate onto the second 20 gig partition (dual-booting). The third partition is a shared data partition.

    I have access to full versions of most Microsoft operating systems because I'm an MSDN subscriber, but it seems like what you want to do would be difficult without the installation media.
     
    mjacob, Feb 27, 2007
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  5. bastafidli

    bastafidli Notebook Enthusiast

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    Could you copy one partition to another and then just fix the MBR?
     
    bastafidli, Feb 28, 2007
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  6. drwho9437

    drwho9437 Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    There is/was a workaround for even having XP installed at all with the retail Vista upgrade discs at least. The key was just to install without key and without activation then to install over that vista install. If this method works for OEM upgrade discs then it should work for any partition setup you want.
     
    drwho9437, Feb 28, 2007
    #6