Dual-booting Vista-xp

[LastSpartan]

I own a Inspiron 6440 from Dell which came with Vista pre-installed. I don't like Vista at all.

I found this tutorial http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...vista-computer/
about dual-booting.

I would like to know if I have to format my C: drive with Vista on it before doing it to have more space.
I would like to know which version of Windows XP I should get? SP2?


Also, my harddisk was already partitionned when I received it. When I go in the Disk Management

Sorry for the french

So it's written

55 mb
Healthy (EISA Configuration)

RECOVERY (D
2,00 gb
Healthy (Principal Partition)

OS (C
145,00 gb NTFS
Healthy (System, Start, Shared Files, blabla, Principal Partition)

-(nothing)-
2,00gb
Healthy ( Principal Partition)

So I have 3 principal partitions...


Can I also make another partition to have my data shared between the 2 OS?

I hate Vista and Dell...

EDIT : And oh while I'm here, I bought a 8gb SD card for my dad and it's formatted in FAT32 which his camera don't give a damn. about so I need to put it into Fat16 (So I'll have a 2gb SD card uh..) but I can't. All I can is NTFS and FAT32. Do you guys know a top secret way or a software to format it in FAT16?

 

[Dreadnought]

Whats wrong with Vista?

 

[LastSpartan]

Slows down my PC, almost all my apps aren't working anymore, my microphone plug just don't work with Vista, it's ugly, it takes lots of time to start up, I can't install themes, it's bad when you want to render something in 3D, it's called Vista, and I think that's all what I don't like. Oh and why it can't understand that I DO want to start Word and it don't need to ask me 5 times if I'm sure to be sure that I'm sure I want to use this software for sure.

 

[Dreadnought]

Sounds to me like you just need a new computer .

You should just disable most of the Vista options, because this Duel-Booting to me sounds like it will just make things worse since you will take up much more memory having two OS on one computer. Why not just downgrade instead of having both on there?

 

[LastSpartan]

Because I would have to make a clean install of everything, and Dell is too stupid to give me the Vista install cds.

And my computer is only 1 year old and costed me a lot

 

[Dreadnought]

IDK then, I spent $1,000 on my Inspiron and it runs Vista Home Premium damn near perfectly. All my apps work and (almost) everything loads fine and quick. Have you done a defrag in awhile? Maybe you dont have enough RAM?

 

[tlither]

I just got a 3 ghz pentium 4 with 1 gig of ram from a friend. It has Vista home premium on it and runs like crap.

You are probably having ram issues. I suggest at least 2 gig with Vista running at it's minimum. Turn off the bells and whistles.

If you have all your app discs, I'd install XP SP2 and reinstall the apps after backing up your data.

FAT16 from a Vista machine? Think you are out of luck unless you find another machine and use it to format the card.

 

[LastSpartan]

I have 2gb of RAM, and I spent 1,600$

It runs like crap.

I'm defragging once a month approx.

For exemple, I'm connected with Internet Explorer to write this. I'm connected to internet.

My Firefox tells me the opposite...

Should I delete the other partitions? Like Recovery and the one with no name?

 

[tlither]

If you delete the recovery partition without original disks and something happens you'll have a hard time getting it all back.

 

[LastSpartan]

Okay I'll keep it

 

[odst26]

buy a laptop

 

[Dreadnought]

Microsoft Vista Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz
3 GB RAM
Nivida Geforce 8600 GT
500 GB Hardrive
=$1,000

I dunno, maybe its cause I have more RAM? or maybe the Quad core? What apps don't work for you?

 

[LastSpartan]

Inspiron 6400 is a laptop...


---

Firefox principaly. Other apps just work slower or some functionnalities bug or stuff like that. Renders in Maya are 2x longer than on my old 4 year computer

 

[gamerguy55]

I used to Dual Boot Windows XP/Vista, when the beta was first out.

I really didn't have a problem with it, but...I have a quad core, with 6 gigs for RAM, so there isn't too much that I can't do, on my computer.

If you plan on dual booting I would suggest a clean install, you will need to get the discs from Dell, then wipe the hard drive/drives to reinstall XP. When you go to create your partitions you will need I would suggest making 3: One with 20GB, for Vista, one with 15GB for XP, and the final partition, your data drive, where everything, save the operating systems, will be stored with however much space is left. Oh, and if you do try this, reinstall it using NTSF, not NTSF Quick

You 'can' do the dual boot, without wiping your hard drives, but that only make it so more things can go wrong.

As to the NTSF/FAT32/FAT16 question, there is no way, that I know of, you can change it so it supports FAT32, for most things, if it doesn't support it, there isn't a way to make it support it. It's odd that the camera doesn't accept that, though..

 

[Toby]

I also had a dual booting system, but then i scrapped my xp partition because vista just worked for me...

alright, here's the problem: you alsways have to install XP FIRST and Vista second. ALWAYS. xp's bootloader doesn't do vista's... meh, it's a pain.

as gamerguy55 said, easier to wipe the drives, but if you haven't got vista install dvds then = suckage.

without wiping the disks, you will have to know exactly what you're doing, and if you're asking here, you probably aren't a pro...

tlither: not entirely true, it's only if some of you're windows gets corrupted that the backup partition is used, but modern installations cds can also repair windows... dell uses it because they pre-install a load of crap, which also "needs" recovering.

As to the NTSF/FAT32/FAT16 question, there is no way, that I know of, you can change it so it supports FAT32, for most things, if it doesn't support it, there isn't a way to make it support it. It's odd that the camera doesn't accept that, though..

No, it's not a question of NTSF/FAT32/FAT16, in fact it's not possible to format over 2 GB with fat16, that's why it was replaced by fat32 (which only does 2 TB per volume, so NTFS is the future).

It's probable that the camera is so old, they never thought flash cards would get bigger than 4 GB and that's why it can't handle the 8 GB card (and probably doesn't support NTFS)

 

[LastSpartan]

Yeah when the camera came out, we bought a 256mb flash card and it costed a lot ^^

it's a HP 850

Thanks Gamerguy, pretty exactly what I needed


And I found one DVD for Vista!

It's from Dell, just need to find the damn serial number that goes with it

When do I choose between NTFS and NTFS Quick?

 

[Brainal]

Don't want to sound like a dick, but get Linux

 

[LastSpartan]

I don't think Linux supports the Apps I need.

What Linux are you using?

 

[Brainal]

I don't think Linux supports the Apps I need.

What Linux are you using?

Ubuntu Hardy 64-bit. Works like a charm!

I tried out Fedora and it seems the same really.

 

[Toby]

Don't want to sound like a dick, but get Linux

...no. linux is so annoying to config, takes up too much of your life. plus, apps support is rubbish... the gimp?

It's from Dell, just need to find the damn serial number that goes with it

bottom of the laptop, shiny sticker... normally, or in a manual. look for a shiny sticker

When do I choose between NTFS and NTFS Quick?

NTFS goes over the whole hard drive, nulling/erasing everything... NTFS Quick only writes the data tables. NTFS Quick is quite okay if you're sure your hd has no defects (it hasn't failed or "lost" any data).

(not sure about this, correct me if I'm wrong)