installing xp after vista questions

S

sk8_aholic

New Member
hey guys

(in my signature you will see what computer i have)
it came with windows vista and that is on my C: drive, i recently had some interest in playing an old game i found which is red alert 2, but i tried installing it a few times a while ago but it wouldn't work, and there are tons of people complaining online about it not working, so it's not only me, it's obvious that vista has a problem with the game.
anyways i was wondering what would happen if i were to install xp on the 3rd internal hard drive that i have, i have the first 2 hard drives being used, but the 3rd is completely free. i've read all those things about dual booting, and i don't feel like trying it because of the fear of loosing my files on vista. so my questions are. if i were to turn off my computer, disconnect my C: hard drive (the first one that has vista installed on it) and keep the other 2 connected, and started my computer, then i figure the computer would realise there isnt an operating system in it, so i would have to then put the windows xp cd in and install xp on the 3rd empty hard drive with the vista hard drive still disconnected.
would xp run fine? minus driver issues, would it start up, and then if i wanted to run vista again, i could just turn off my computer, disconnect the xp installed 3rd hard drive, and reconnect the 1st vista installed hard drive, would my computer start up completely fine as if i never installed xp at all?

thanks a lot, hope that wasn't confusing!
 
It was kinda confusing :P
You can dual boot through GRUB i know that, just haven't done it before, alot of people have done it. What you should do is Boot to Disk then it will ask you which HDD you want xp installed on and then just select whichever one you want, it always works for me (I reformat computers all the time in my house and I also dual boot them once in a while)
 
i've never heard of GRUB, i just did some research and everyone keeps saying like linux and other stuff, not one mention of vista.. so that scares me.

so if i did what i was saying, i could get around it by changing the boot order in the beginning? if i was using the 3rd hard drive, i would have to change the boot order to the 3rd hard drive, and then change it back to 1st when i connected the vista installed hard drive again?
 
Swapping drives as you described is the best way to use multiple operating systems on one computer in my opinion. You are not touching the unused operating system at all, and restore points won't get deleted as happens in a conventional dual boot environment. I use the drive swapping method myself for Vista, XP, and Ubuntu, but I installed a mobile rack in an unused 5.25" optical bay which is more convenient than having to open the case to swap the drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817123304
Extra hard drive trays are also available.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995002
I've been using this setup quite some time now without any trouble or performance loss. Just a thought.
 
No problem, sk8_aholic. Glad to help. I actually linked the hard drive rack and trays that I use in my first post, but I failed to point them out properly. I guess I was writing in too much of a hurry. I use SATA drives, so if you have IDE drives, these particular parts wont work. There are other racks that work with IDE though.
Here's the rack I use which comes with 1 tray for 1 hard drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817123304
Then you can just buy extra trays for additonal hard drives. Here's the link to the ones I use.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995002
These are very sturdy as they are mostly metal construction, and the trays even have a small fan for cooling the drive. I've been using this setup for over 6 months now without any problems. Good luck, and let us know if you need more info.
 
I have the same computer. Didn't try to dual-boot, but wanted to run XP on it. I got XP running okay, but I have a problem with the video card (problem has existed since day one). The DVI output will blank-out for a half a second then come back. Usually it will give just one periodic blanking after several minutes (or hours) but sometimes it will blink continuously and make the display unusable. Updated the drivers but that didn't help. I'm about ready to buy a new video card (currently I am using both the DVI -blinky- output and the VGA -perfect- outputs, but would really like two good DVI outptus. Have you had issues with the video card?
 
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