Can I install windows XP and Vista?

[Wanster]

Can I have Windows Vista and install Windows XP on another hard drive?
If so how do I do it?
Thanx
Just to explain I have 2 500gig hard drives. I would like one to have XP so I can play old god games and one to have Vista that came with the pc.

[Kay S]

umm. I'm not sure. I have Windows XP and I tried installing Vista, but it said my computer will not do it (so I have to buy a new computer, but I didn't) All I did was install the Vista look.

[z??mjet???]

Yes you can install Vista and XP together; if you install XP after Vista, the XP bootloader overwrites the Vista bootloader so that Vista will no longer boot! You will need to download EasyBCD to restore the Vista bootloader and to add an entry for Windows XP....yes, it is mind-numbingly tedious, I agree!
EasyBCD is free
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/easybcd.html

another problem I've experienced with Vista and XP on separate drives is Vista's slowness at enumerating the drives in explorer; you end up with two chattering drives, I'm afraid.

[glitterwishesx]

You can have them both on the harddrive, but you need them on a different partition, which means splitting the harddrive into two.
to do this, install a program such as norton partition manager, and create new partition. you will then have to restart.
when you install the new operating system, you will get a choice as to where to install it, choose the different drive.

if you have two drives you can do this aswell, but without faffing about with the partitions, make sure you set one drive as slave though with the jumper settings, to do this, pull the drive out where you want your second operating system, and there will be a little square thingy in some metal pins, on the drive it should say where to place the little square.

[coofooman]

Hi, Why anyone would want Vista in the first place puzzles me, but yes you can. In fact if you have a large enough hard drive say 200Gig you could put all the windows O/S on you Pc, ie win 98, ME, 2000, XP and Vista. All on the same computer and swop between any of them so all those 98 games you have lieing around can all be played again. So how do you do this. it's all done via a program called HyperOs. Not only can you put all these O/S on your PC you will never ever have to format your H/D ever again once the system is loaded. It uses Partition Magic to split your H/D so you can put an O/S on each partition. you make a copy of each O/S so if something goes wrong you simply drag and drop the copy of you system back on it's drive. to find out more about this system just type in HyperOs in the search engine and read all about it. Well worth the effort.

Hope this helps
Dr K.I.A.

[Luke S]

Yes, you have to create a duel partition in your main hard drive or use another hard drive if your computer has 2, this will effectively give you 2 separate computers on 1 physical system, however introducing 2 Os's may result in a slow down in your systems performance but usually not be much.

I recommend for time savers installing XP first as Vista won't allow a downgrade unless confirmed my microsoft and then only if it is Vista ultimate.