Vista XP dual boot

[freeztar]

So I bought a brand new laptop over the weekend ($600=Gateway 14.1" WXGA, AMD Turion 64 x2 1.8ghz 512KBx2 L2, 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon 1270x, 250GB SATA HD, Vista Home Premium <ick!>).

 

So I bought XP home to install as a dual boot with Vista. After searching for XP drivers for my hardware, I finally have them all except the Radeon driver. Well, I think I found it, but it seems a lot of people are having problems with the xp drivers for this card and I got a beta, but anyways...

I went to the command line and used diskpart to "shrink" my C: volume. It said that it shrunk it to 86GB unallocated.

 

Now I see the following:

c: 136.92 GB (system, boot, pagefile, etc.=Vista)

85.51 GB unallocated

d: recovery 10.46 GB (I thought about getting rid of this as I have the install disk, any benefit to keeping it that I might be overlooking?)

 

So why did it only create 85.51 GB unallocated. Shouldn't it have been all the free space on C: minus Vista, or thereabouts accounting for pagefile, MBR, etc.? So what's being reserved in that 136GB on my C: drive? ;)

 

I tried out the Vista disk management and tried to "shrink the shrink", so to speak. 0MB available for shrink.

 

I'd like to have a 20GB partition for Vista, a 12GB partition for XP, and another partition for programs and other files (maybe even another one to try linux). Should I spend the time to learn how to do this with Vista, or should I just use gparted? (or was that just a rhetorical question in this forum? :eek2: )

[GAHD]

The File Allocation Table takes up space too. How much is dependent on the file system.

[GAHD]

oh, and it's not nice to shrink partitions. Always best to wipe them out, and rebuild from a blank slate. Chance of truncation and all.

 

Good luck with the dual-booting, I hear XP likes to be installed first.

[freeztar]

oh, and it's not nice to shrink partitions. Always best to wipe them out, and rebuild from a blank slate. Chance of truncation and all.

 

I could just start from scratch, but I would like to learn more, and hence make things difficult. :eek2:

 

What do you mean by "truncation" exactly and how much of it is chance? My comp seems to be in good shape after the shrinkage.

The reason I used shrink is because it's supposed to safely give you a partition (as I understand it). I don't think I can install XP onto a Vista drive without separating them first...Is there a better way?

 

Good luck with the dual-booting, I hear XP likes to be installed first.

 

Thanks, I've read that as well, but my guess is that has to do with the Vista MBR being overwritten by the XP MBR which requires rewriting the Vista MBR with a repair and then patching XP to "recognize" Vista. (phew)

 

I wouldn't even mind that much just using Vista were it not for the fact that none of my hardware or software is supported (except Office of course). ;)

I still want to be able to have it around though because I might need it for new software or hardware. :eek: Thus my (and a majority of other people's I would imagine) dilemma...

[GAHD]

Truncating a file happens when a program or the user forces a file's size to be modified to some value smaller than the original, or it gets dislocated in the file system(Fat says file start is byte #X but really it's X+24). Data loss is inevitable(though sometimes rectifiable) in such a scenario; it generally happens when files are stored too close to the 'end' of a partition that gets resized improperly.

 

I'd suggest a boot loader that independently loads each OS from an independent MBR.

GRUB and GAG come to mind.

 

I don't know the specifics of XP-Vista interaction in a dual boot environment, this method is primarily used in XP-Linux lineups.

[freeztar]

You've mentioned FAT a couple times, so I suspect the truncation issues are relics of that file system, or at least days past.

 

I just went out on a limb and used gparted to change my Vista partition to 27MiB and created a partition for XP with 12MiB and yet another partition with the remainder for a sort of file folder that I can use to store XP programs and files. The 10GB cushion for the Vista partition should allow me plenty of space to install programs there. Coincidentally, GRUB was loaded on the gparted livecd I used. ;)

 

Now onto the fun part...Installing XP...

[Boerseun]

Go solid linux.

 

Vista is simply XP with more problems. Read Microsuck | What's So Bad About Microsoft? for a pretty good rundown on this issue, as well as why your old Office software ain't good enough no more.

 

Also, Vista's one feature (supposedly), is that it doesn't have a command prompt anymore. Er, create a shortcut on your desktop and simply call it cmd. Nothing less, nothing more. Just cmd. And then double click on it. Kaboom - Command Prompt! And then look at the structure. It's Windows XP. But it's the Windows XP "YOUR *** IS OURS" - version. Get out as quick as you can!

[alexander]

GRUB is god btw!

 

i would boot into a live nix distro and do my partitioning from there, then install xp then vista and then back to the live cd to then install grub, change the grub config to include both partitions/OSes and install whatever theme you want reboot and now you have a real boot loader and not the windows crap

[freeztar]

Go solid linux.

 

No can do. I need Windoze for my music production. Linux doesn't cut it...yet.

Vista is simply XP with more problems. Read Microsuck | What's So Bad About Microsoft? for a pretty good rundown on this issue, as well as why your old Office software ain't good enough no more.

I'll give it a read, but so far it has been smooth sailing. I had a much harder time setting up XP than I did with Vista, and I've set up XP a million times before. I got Office Enterprise 2007 from work for $20 and it runs flawlessly so far.

Also, Vista's one feature (supposedly), is that it doesn't have a command prompt anymore. Er, create a shortcut on your desktop and simply call it cmd. Nothing less, nothing more. Just cmd. And then double click on it. Kaboom - Command Prompt!

 

Or you can just press "shift-F10". :eek:

 

And then look at the structure. It's Windows XP. But it's the Windows XP "YOUR *** IS OURS" - version. Get out as quick as you can!

 

It seems a lot smoother than XP to me. So far, my biggest gripe about Vista is lack of backwards compatibility which means I have to run XP to use my music hardware and software. :hihi:

[freeztar]

GRUB is god btw!

 

i would boot into a live nix distro and do my partitioning from there, then install xp then vista and then back to the live cd to then install grub, change the grub config to include both partitions/OSes and install whatever theme you want reboot and now you have a real boot loader and not the windows crap

 

Sounds good Alex, How do I set this up. I don't speak Nix...yet.

 

edit: I've already partitioned everything with gparted btw. I just need a boot loader.

[alexander]

nice, gnu parted is an awesome proggy, gparted is an excellent interface to it :)

 

all you need is in these guides:

The definitive dual-booting guide: Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step | APC Magazine

 

PS if you really want GRUB, i would follow the tripple boot with linux tutorial.... if you dont want linux yet (of which i highly recommend ubuntu for beginners, and intemediates) you can omit the installation of grub, just make a small boot partition, install grub, and write the config file omiting the linux part.... and i'm sure there are guides out there btw

[alexander]

grub.conf would look something like this btw:

title Windows Vista
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows XP
root(hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

 

the tutorials make use of the boot loader available in windows.... i personally prefer the good old tested, stable GRUB.

[freeztar]

Cool, I might as well install Linux as well while I'm at it.

How big of a partition should I make for, say, Kubuntu?

[alexander]

it all depends on what you want to do with it, just run, or run and use, or what?

[alexander]

i would go at least 4 gigs for it, to run it, 6 to run it and you think you may use it in the future, 8 recommended, but if you decide to use it later on, adding space in linux is not a very hard to do thing...

[freeztar]

i would go at least 4 gigs for it, to run it, 6 to run it and you think you may use it in the future, 8 recommended

 

I think I'll go with 8 as I have the space and I'll probably want to try out some of the music apps (if I can get my soundcard working)

 

Speaking of which, I ran Belarc advisor to try to see the make of my soundcard and it just comes up with "High Definition Audio Device" (I guess referring to the HDMI). Is there some other way to figure out who makes the card and where to get XP (and possibly Linux??) drivers for it?

 

but if you decide to use it later on, adding space in linux is not a very hard to do thing...

 

I could not believe how quick and easy gparted was to use. I had all my partitions in under 5 minutes without ever having used the prog before. :)

[alexander]

in linux there is a nifty command called lspci, and it's even niftyer with the -v option, so try it out :)

 

and nix will most likely support the chipset, unless it's a one off. just tell us what the sound card is, and i'll tell you if it's supported or not (and maybe even where and what drivers to get)