Windows Vista and XP Dual Boot
Today I successfully completed a dual installation of Windows XP and Windows Vista Beta. I've now got a PC that will boot to either operating system. This is great for being able to test things on either platform with a variety of browsers.
In case anyone else needs to do it here’s how I did it. I should say don’t do this unless you have backed up your data and you don’t mind if you have to totally reinstall the operating system. I take no responsibility if this doesn’t work!
Dividing the hard drive ¶
Vista won’t install on a single partition. What this means is that you will need to create a partition on your hard drive (unless you have two). Thankfully the excellent and free GParted will allow you do this. My hard drive is 80GB. I kept 50GB for XP and handed over 30GB for the Vista installation. One you have completed the partition reboot your machine and all being well you should see a new hard drive on your system. Now you can move onto installing Vista.
Vista Installation ¶
The Vista Beta is available for download from the Windows Vista site. You can get a product key by signing up to the beta program. The download is an iso file so you will need to make a bootable DVD of this file. Once you ahve done this reboot and begin the installation process. When asked where you want to install select the new partition you have just created.
Once you have installed Vista when you boot you will see a black screen asking which version of Windows you would like to run.
The install went pretty smoothly for me - a few drivers were missing but I was able to update them manually. So far I’m very impressed with Vista.
Tags
Can you help make this article better? You can edit it here and send me a pull request.
See Also
-
Windows Vista User Interface Design
If you haven't seen the Windows Vista site I think you should have a look. I'm quite impressed with it. For a moment I was quite excited at seeing a strong design used with tableless layout. What was a shame was that the site failed to validate. It wouldn't take much effort to get the site through the validator either. -
Goodbye Internet Explorer Hacks (well maybe)
I had to do a template today and I took the opportunity to code using no hacks. With the impending launch of Internet Explorer 7 there are going to be many sites that won't render properly because of existing Internet Explorer hacks. -
Mac motifs on Windows Messenger Live design
I don't think I'll be the only one to notice that the design of Windows Messenger Live seems to be heavily influenced by Mac design even down to the OSX style motifs in the background.