Vista and XP Pro?

grannie14

New Member
I just purchased a new Dell Dimension 9200. It came with Vista Basic. I wanted it with XP Pro but they would not change it. So I want to buy & install XP Pro. Can I have both operating systems? Can I do this by partitioning my hard drive? I have my old computer’s hard drive partitioned for C: drive and then two smaller partitions for data storage and I would like two data partitions besides OS. But it has been 5 years and I’m not sure how to do it? Is there some on-line instruction/help for this? Don’t tell me to buy one of those programs that does it, I tried to do that and it was a waste of money.

Or maybe I don’t need Vista at all? We don’t do gaming. Mostly photos and accounting. I just want to be able to use the various programs we already have, many from Win 98SE. Since this is just Vista Basic maybe it wouldn’t benefit me to keep it. I always have the CD if I need it at a later date. Any opinions?
THANX :confused:
 
Just partition the hdd using the xp cd and use that free space for your xp partition i did the same thing...

yeah...if they already gave you Vista on the system that you have paid for that....seems a waste if your gonna format it and use xp.

I would just dual boot until they realease SP1 for Vista.
 
yeah...if they already gave you Vista on the system that you have paid for that....seems a waste if your gonna format it and use xp.

I would just dual boot until they realease SP1 for Vista.

They give you the installation cd with it aswell...so its not like you're wasting money by taking it off (you can still put it back on whenever you choose)
 
Last edited:
trying to get xp to install on a vista system is like jumping through flaming hoops over a shark pit after someone decides to drop human blood in it


Vista changed the boot strap process and changed lots of things and probably dropped all support for DOS based applications (win98se). That is why a lot of games that are old you run in virtual consoles or emulators these days because that is how you can get them to run in older OSes.

My advice is stick with XP since you know it works and wait for vista to become stable. Not to mention vista basic offers absolutely no advantages over XP
 
trying to get xp to install on a vista system is like jumping through flaming hoops over a shark pit after someone decides to drop human blood in it


Vista changed the boot strap process and changed lots of things and probably dropped all support for DOS based applications (win98se). That is why a lot of games that are old you run in virtual consoles or emulators these days because that is how you can get them to run in older OSes.

My advice is stick with XP since you know it works and wait for vista to become stable. Not to mention vista basic offers absolutely no advantages over XP

i dont know why people including you say vista is not stable. have you ever tryed it? i have it running on 2 comps perfectly
 
They give you the installation cd with it aswell...so its not like you're wasting money by taking it off (you can still put it back on whenever you choose)

ohh,Only sometimes with prebuilt computers they only give you a recovery disk.
 
i dont know why people including you say vista is not stable. have you ever tryed it? i have it running on 2 comps perfectly

been running ultimate since RC1 beta and been using business edition since it was officially released. I am not a fan of it, nor do I think it is a valued upgrade over windows xp. End users won't really benefit anything from it, and really only the IT professionals benefit from the changes.

Vista broke every driver, broke the netware client, broke compatibility by forcing things like IE7 (thats not 100% MS's fault, but it is partly), it broke third party networking (ie to linux and macs), it runs a lot slower than XP, its more of a resource hog, shall I go on?

NAP, Reliability Monitor, IPv6, User structure, etc really do not benefit the end user, they really only benefit the IT people. 400 dollars for windows vista ultimate? Not anywhere near worth it, not to mention most people who go out and buy ultimate wouldn't even use the features it offers. 95% of home users could get away with just using home premium, but ya it is marketed that way.
 
been running ultimate since RC1 beta and been using business edition since it was officially released. I am not a fan of it, nor do I think it is a valued upgrade over windows xp. End users won't really benefit anything from it, and really only the IT professionals benefit from the changes.

Vista broke every driver, broke the netware client, broke compatibility by forcing things like IE7 (thats not 100% MS's fault, but it is partly), it broke third party networking (ie to linux and macs), it runs a lot slower than XP, its more of a resource hog, shall I go on?

NAP, Reliability Monitor, IPv6, User structure, etc really do not benefit the end user, they really only benefit the IT people. 400 dollars for windows vista ultimate? Not anywhere near worth it, not to mention most people who go out and buy ultimate wouldn't even use the features it offers. 95% of home users could get away with just using home premium, but ya it is marketed that way.

to be honest Vista has been performing much faster on my system that xp....things start up quicker...applications instal quicker.,It automaticly instaled my printer drivers,Keyboard drivers.
i was shocked realy....vistas not that bad imo.
 
to be honest Vista has been performing much faster on my system that xp....things start up quicker...applications instal quicker.,It automaticly instaled my printer drivers,Keyboard drivers.
i was shocked realy....vistas not that bad imo.

see for me it seems to have the illusion of running faster but in reality it doesn't. It performs about the same as my XP install on the same system and in some instances it takes longer. VPC runs like crap on it compared to VMware or parallels on other platforms that I run.

I run 4 OSes constantly for my job: XP Pro, Vista business, OS X, and Linux. Everyday I work with all of these OSes and do different tasks. Every day I get to test vista out since we do not plan on rolling vista out at my work for at least 24 months. Only the IT department is allowed to install it on our work machines. MS still haven't patched the security loop holes the russian hacker group found back in december. What does that tell you about the quality control over at MS. MS is such a big company and it is poorly managed. They have the money to pay the best programmers out there, but their management of every department is poor, and that is why they make mediocre products at best.
 
I have to agree with tlarkin vista performs about the same but its really starting to get annoying for me with all the dam new popups and such i often get frustrated and go back to my xp partition and not use vista a lot...
 
to be honest Vista has been performing much faster on my system that xp....things start up quicker...applications instal quicker.,It automaticly instaled my printer drivers,Keyboard drivers.
i was shocked realy....vistas not that bad imo.

oh things start up quicker because of the new memory management in vista preloads things in memory. For example, if you use MS Word a lot, it will preload MS word at boot up in memory so it loads faster. I personally do not like this feature overall but for basic users who use their computer for the same 4 things will obviously see a performance increase.
 
It automaticly instaled my printer drivers,Keyboard drivers.
i was shocked realy....vistas not that bad imo.

And XP doesn't automatically install drivers? For most basic things, you plug them in and they work on XP. Maybe not printers drivers, but pretty much anything else.
 
And XP doesn't automatically install drivers? For most basic things, you plug them in and they work on XP. Maybe not printers drivers, but pretty much anything else.

well on some things they may just work without the drivers,My Usb mp3 player came with a drivers disk but it didnt need them as xp already detected them,However for my printer,Wireless mouse & keyboaard they needed drivers t work,Vista they instaled automaticly ;)
 
Back
Top