Dual boot question....

Hi everyone,

I am interested in dual booting my M1730 and I wondered if you guys could maybe help me.
I already have vista installed on one of my two 160HDD.
I was wondering do I make a partition on the already installed vista HDD or do I install XP on my 2nd HDD which is empty?
Also will XP recognise my HDD or will i need the drivers or it.


Regards Jim

 

Very good guide.

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm

For resizing partitions, I'd use a good 3rd party software (e.g. Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0) instead of the Vista one, because the Vista shrink function doesn't allow you to resize a partition by a lot. If you need something free, you can try GParted, you will need to create a Live CD or Live USB. Also, perform a defrag before resizing the partition.

 

you dont really need to defrag but nice guide.make sure to copy and save your boot configs in case of corruption.
This is good for people that boot more then dual.I have 7 OS's on 1 750gig drive selectable.

SwissKnife V3.22 is free as well.

 

GParted live CD doesn't always work for everyone.

I tried many versions of it, pretty much all of them on both my Acer 9302 and Asus M70VM and it still wouldn't load up.

@benson881 - you may need to locate the SATA drivers for your HDD if it's a SATA drive so that XP can recognise it. (although that's probably mentioned in that guide stewie linked to)

 

True, but it will be safer, especially if the drive is very fragmented. The less data the partition software needs to move, the safer it will be.

Yeah, this is why I prefer something written for Windows like Disk Director, it can create a bootable CD tool as well.

 

You would need the driver for it, unless you slipstream the driver onto the installation package using many of the guides above

cheers ...

 

Another simpler method is go into the BIOS and change the AHCI mode to Compatibility mode, install XP and SATA driver, then re-enable AHCI. This was the method I used for my setup. If your BIOS doesn't have that option, then you will need to slipstream the driver like qhn stated.

 

Indeed. :thumbup:

cheers ...

 

Thanks for or your help,

I think I will try the method using the BIOS. Sounds the easiest
So If I install XP on a 6GB Partition. Will all my programs get messed up if I save them to the same place Vista is installed. Would it be better to make my XP partition larger to save progams and games onto that?

Regards Jim

 

I used GParted with good results but it took a painstakingly long time. I mean hours to shrink a partition. I almost shut down figuring it wasn't working. I was told later that's a big no-no. In the meantime, I got my room clean!

Is Acronis Disk Director faster.

 

I've resized partitions with Acronis Disk Director before and it didn't take a particularly long time; however, that's neither here nor there as I had only 3 partitions at the time, none of which was more than about 20% full (i.e., each had at least 80% free space), and I did the resizing shortly after a full reinstallation.

How much free space did you have on each partition?

 

Not sure If I remember. Let's see. I think I had 45GB of free space on C:, shrunk that to 15GB of free space (30 total) and added it to D in an extended partition. I forget!

However, just the other day I cloned a new HDD from 120GB to 320GB using Seagate DiscWizard and resized the partitions, rather than proportionally enlarging them, which didn't take but an hour.

 

Hey guys,

I've managed to install XP on my machine. Decided to use the whole of my second HDD. Everything seems to work fine but I am unable to re-enable my flash module and ACHI in my BIOS.
I tried to install Intel Matrix Storage Manager but it just says "my system doesnt meet the requirements" Could anyone help me to enable these again please.

Regards Jim

 

I read a bunch of things to do setup a dual boot on my laptop and the only thing I am afraid of is this boot corruption thing. Where do I find the boot configs?

sorry if it's a bumb question.

 

As Shyster1 stated, Disk Director didn't take a particularly long time. I resized a 160 GB partition to 35 GB and it took less than 10 minutes. I did another 250 GB to 40 GB and it was about the same time. Both drives had OS and data in them.