Downsides of dual booting?

911aaron

911aaron

New Member
I'm tired of dealing with Vista. I want to go back to XP. So I looked up how to dual boot Vista and XP on the same hard drive. It sounds great and all, but my question is, are there any downsides of dual booting?


Do you think it would be a wiser choice to replace my current hard drive with a new clean one and install XP on it?

I don't mind losing some of files. I got nothing too important on my hard drive anyways. I'm really sick of Vista and I want to avoid it as much as possible.
 
The one main downside of dual booting XP along with Vista is that when booting into XP that will cancel out the Vista restore points. That's the known one since most prefer a dual boot ease over seeing two separate hard drives used for two separate stand alone versions of Windows.

As far as Vista I've been running the same edition since Vista was first released and now have it as the default OS. Why replace a drive while you can simply add another one in and have both versions running?
 
as pc eye said ^^

for reassurance if you doing it, make sure you have 2 harddrives.

if not, partition the drive into 2.

use 1 for vista, 1 for xp.

saves you so much hassle if you need a restore point in vista and then you realise xp friggin removed it!
 
PC eye said:
The one main downside of dual booting XP along with Vista is that when booting into XP that will cancel out the Vista restore points. That's the known one since most prefer a dual boot ease over seeing two separate hard drives used for two separate stand alone versions of Windows.

As far as Vista I've been running the same edition since Vista was first released and now have it as the default OS. Why replace a drive while you can simply add another one in and have both versions running?
Click to expand...

I think my motherboard can only have 1 Hard drive. I'm not exactly sure. Can anyone please check for me? heres the link to my motherboard:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00906129&lc=en&cc=de&dlc=&product=3397528#N935
Sorry I'm still somewhat of a beginner. :P
 
You have one ide channel typical of newer boards but 4 sata ports to work with as far adding drives in. Eventually I'll replace the one ide optical drive here and see a second sata type cd writer accompany a sata dvd drive eliminating the larger data cable for just one drive alone now that the last ide hard drive is gone.

When first dual booting Vista with XP the ide saw Vista there while setting the first sata as the default with XP. Each had been stand alone at first until working with a new beta tool hopefully to see general release rather soon.

Dual booting between an ide and sata drive? Not the best! Two ide or two sata for a dual boot while stand alone installations are simply run separate from each other. That is one thing you can't do with both on one drive since the mbr is shared. Seeing the boot information corrected each time you load one version instead of the other doesn't go well either.
 
PC eye said:
You have one ide channel typical of newer boards but 4 sata ports to work with as far adding drives in. Eventually I'll replace the one ide optical drive here and see a second sata type cd writer accompany a sata dvd drive eliminating the larger data cable for just one drive alone now that the last ide hard drive is gone.

When first dual booting Vista with XP the ide saw Vista there while setting the first sata as the default with XP. Each had been stand alone at first until working with a new beta tool hopefully to see general release rather soon.

Dual booting between an ide and sata drive? Not the best! Two ide or two sata for a dual boot while stand alone installations are simply run separate from each other. That is one thing you can't do with both on one drive since the mbr is shared. Seeing the boot information corrected each time you load one version instead of the other doesn't go well either.
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats why i want to either partition my current HD, or replace it with a new one. What do you think would be a better choice?
 
That will depend on what you are planning to run as far as both drives and OSs. For simply seeing XP replace Vista a quick reformat of the drive will see that done.

If you decide you need a 500gb or larger drive for some reason then a simple swap would still see XP go on there. But if you already have plenty of drive space you have the choice of even deleting the existing primary as well as seeing it reformatted in order to see a new one created just for XP alone.

A working dual boot of the two versions will take a little work. That will first require shrinking down the size of the existing Vista primary to see XP added into the newer type of boot loader or planning everything out all over again to see XP installed first and then added in when the newer version is installed fresh. That's where patience with both versions will be needed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top