Dare I triple boot?

Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s with
half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot with XP
at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone calls from
the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working right...")
makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it might be a
chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then I could put
RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.

Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How well
does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system meltdown,
but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to take the
chance with Vista.

John
Wed Oct 11 08:56:49 CDT 2006

While there haven't been as many disasters reported since beta2 it is still
safest to install Vista with your other systems disconnected. Then you can
either set up the Vista boot process to multi boot or if you have a BIOS
that easily allows you choose the system drive at boot time, you could
choose that route.


"Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:uk288nT7GHA.1252@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> with half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot
> with XP at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone
> calls from the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working
> right...") makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it
> might be a chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then
> I could put RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>
> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> well does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> meltdown, but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to
> take the chance with Vista.
>

Charlie
Wed Oct 11 09:36:26 CDT 2006

Yes, you can triple boot. Get your old versions in there first, then install
Vista.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/xperts64/search.aspx?q=dual+boot&p=1

I have one machine that is currently quad-booting. Vista and LH Server, XP
and Server 2k3. All 64bit.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


"Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:uk288nT7GHA.1252@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> with half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot
> with XP at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone
> calls from the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working
> right...") makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it
> might be a chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then
> I could put RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>
> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> well does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> meltdown, but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to
> take the chance with Vista.
>

Jim
Wed Oct 11 10:16:35 CDT 2006

Many years ago, I had a machine configured to triple boot. One day, I took
a hit on my C drive that corrupted the FAT and took out all three operating
systems. While that may have been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, I
decided that from that day forward, I would use a hardware switch to select
from independent physical drives.

Of course, I can't share information easily, since only one drive is active
at a time. I use one drive as my development system and the others as test
environments. I can easily write out a test suite on a memory stick and
read it back in under one of the other systems. It works for me.

"Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:uk288nT7GHA.1252@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> with half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot
> with XP at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone
> calls from the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working
> right...") makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it
> might be a chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then
> I could put RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>
> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> well does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> meltdown, but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to
> take the chance with Vista.
>

Colin
Wed Oct 11 10:46:00 CDT 2006

Not on a production or primary home computer.

After Vista goes gold you might, but be aware that booting into XP destroys
Vista system restore points and other VSS copies so you may want to follow
John's advice to make sure XP cannot see the Vista volumes at all.

"Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:uk288nT7GHA.1252@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> with half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot
> with XP at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone
> calls from the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working
> right...") makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it
> might be a chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then
> I could put RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>
> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> well does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> meltdown, but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to
> take the chance with Vista.
>

Carlos
Wed Oct 11 13:20:02 CDT 2006

Dennis:
I am currently running triple boot.
1.- Windows XP 32 bit
2.- Windows XP x64
3.- Windows Vista x64 rc1
No problems so far.
I have My Documents, Favorites and Outlook database in a separate partition
shared by the 3 operating systems with absolutely no problems.
I can edit a document in Vista and later continue working on XP.
I can read my e-mail in XP x64 and later edit it in Vista x64.

I am also planning to go to quad boot, adding Vista x64 rc2.
RC2 cannot complete the upgrade on top of RC1!

Carlos

"Dennis Gordon" wrote:

> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s with
> half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot with XP
> at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone calls from
> the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working right...")
> makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it might be a
> chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then I could put
> RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>
> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How well
> does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system meltdown,
> but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to take the
> chance with Vista.
>
>
>

Dennis
Wed Oct 11 14:02:57 CDT 2006

Man, this is the whole gamut of possibilities to ponder...;-) Thanks guys.

I guess installing with the other drives not there, and selecting the boot
drive in the BIOS would be the safest, since you have to reboot anyways to
switch OS if the BIOS will allow me to select among 3 different SCSI drives
(not sure about that), so one more time for the switch isn't that much of a
hassle. OTOH, as Carlos & Charlie point out, a triple boot can be done, so
I'm tempted to give that a try (on a weekend when I have plenty of time to
fix my errors). I could also clone my C drive as it is (I have a spare scsi
drive), try the triple boot, and if I run into problems, swap the clone
drive back. If I wasn't so busy these days, I'd have tried it by now. Just
don't want to do something dumber than usual.


"Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:59ACCE8E-2B6F-4F40-8FED-A1971B18055F@microsoft.com...
> Dennis:
> I am currently running triple boot.
> 1.- Windows XP 32 bit
> 2.- Windows XP x64
> 3.- Windows Vista x64 rc1
> No problems so far.
> I have My Documents, Favorites and Outlook database in a separate
> partition
> shared by the 3 operating systems with absolutely no problems.
> I can edit a document in Vista and later continue working on XP.
> I can read my e-mail in XP x64 and later edit it in Vista x64.
>
> I am also planning to go to quad boot, adding Vista x64 rc2.
> RC2 cannot complete the upgrade on top of RC1!
>
> Carlos
>
> "Dennis Gordon" wrote:
>
>> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
>> with
>> half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot with
>> XP
>> at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone calls
>> from
>> the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working right...")
>> makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it might be
>> a
>> chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then I could
>> put
>> RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
>>
>> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
>> well
>> does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
>> meltdown,
>> but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to take the
>> chance with Vista.
>>
>>
>>

Carlos
Wed Oct 11 17:37:01 CDT 2006

Quad boot is up and running right now.
No problems so far.
Carlos

"Dennis Gordon" wrote:

> Man, this is the whole gamut of possibilities to ponder...;-) Thanks guys.
>
> I guess installing with the other drives not there, and selecting the boot
> drive in the BIOS would be the safest, since you have to reboot anyways to
> switch OS if the BIOS will allow me to select among 3 different SCSI drives
> (not sure about that), so one more time for the switch isn't that much of a
> hassle. OTOH, as Carlos & Charlie point out, a triple boot can be done, so
> I'm tempted to give that a try (on a weekend when I have plenty of time to
> fix my errors). I could also clone my C drive as it is (I have a spare scsi
> drive), try the triple boot, and if I run into problems, swap the clone
> drive back. If I wasn't so busy these days, I'd have tried it by now. Just
> don't want to do something dumber than usual.
>
>
> "Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:59ACCE8E-2B6F-4F40-8FED-A1971B18055F@microsoft.com...
> > Dennis:
> > I am currently running triple boot.
> > 1.- Windows XP 32 bit
> > 2.- Windows XP x64
> > 3.- Windows Vista x64 rc1
> > No problems so far.
> > I have My Documents, Favorites and Outlook database in a separate
> > partition
> > shared by the 3 operating systems with absolutely no problems.
> > I can edit a document in Vista and later continue working on XP.
> > I can read my e-mail in XP x64 and later edit it in Vista x64.
> >
> > I am also planning to go to quad boot, adding Vista x64 rc2.
> > RC2 cannot complete the upgrade on top of RC1!
> >
> > Carlos
> >
> > "Dennis Gordon" wrote:
> >
> >> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> >> with
> >> half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot with
> >> XP
> >> at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone calls
> >> from
> >> the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working right...")
> >> makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it might be
> >> a
> >> chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then I could
> >> put
> >> RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
> >>
> >> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> >> well
> >> does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> >> meltdown,
> >> but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to take the
> >> chance with Vista.
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>

Dennis
Wed Oct 11 18:38:19 CDT 2006

What, no Linux, BeOS, Atari TOS, WIN3.1 or 95?

"Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A8BF4A22-4B9C-41CF-84D6-C684D8D39521@microsoft.com...
> Quad boot is up and running right now.
> No problems so far.
> Carlos
>
>

Colin
Fri Oct 13 11:38:10 CDT 2006

Sure. But in virtual machines using Virtual Server and VPC 2007 beta.

"Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:OH7dU5Y7GHA.4408@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> What, no Linux, BeOS, Atari TOS, WIN3.1 or 95?
>
> "Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:A8BF4A22-4B9C-41CF-84D6-C684D8D39521@microsoft.com...
>> Quad boot is up and running right now.
>> No problems so far.
>> Carlos
>>
>>
>
>

Theo
Fri Oct 13 12:28:32 CDT 2006

I didn't find any support for guest USB nor any
non-Microsoft OS in VPC 2007. It appears to be strictly
Microsoft oriented.

Colin Barnhorst wrote:
> Sure. But in virtual machines using Virtual Server and VPC 2007 beta.
>
> "Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:OH7dU5Y7GHA.4408@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> What, no Linux, BeOS, Atari TOS, WIN3.1 or 95?
>>
>> "Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:A8BF4A22-4B9C-41CF-84D6-C684D8D39521@microsoft.com...
>>> Quad boot is up and running right now.
>>> No problems so far.
>>> Carlos
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Colin
Fri Oct 13 13:37:46 CDT 2006

There is no usb support planned for VPC. For Linux running in VPC, see
http://vpc.visualwin.com/. The listing is for VPC 2004. Retesting with
2007 beta is yeilding similar results. The keyword you are using with
regards to Linux is "support" and that means "supported by Microsoft Product
Support Services." Over a thousand Linux distros do run, though.

"Theo" <tvf@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:OXkUI0u7GHA.1188@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>I didn't find any support for guest USB nor any non-Microsoft OS in VPC
>2007. It appears to be strictly Microsoft oriented.
>
> Colin Barnhorst wrote:
>> Sure. But in virtual machines using Virtual Server and VPC 2007 beta.
>>
>> "Dennis Gordon" <bixster2005@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:OH7dU5Y7GHA.4408@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>>> What, no Linux, BeOS, Atari TOS, WIN3.1 or 95?
>>>
>>> "Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>>> news:A8BF4A22-4B9C-41CF-84D6-C684D8D39521@microsoft.com...
>>>> Quad boot is up and running right now.
>>>> No problems so far.
>>>> Carlos
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>

Spirefm
Sun Oct 15 10:43:01 CDT 2006

I had a quadruple boot - XP English/XP Spanish/Vista 32 bit/Vista 64 bit that
worked fine. The Spanish went off to another computer and I decided to stick
with Vista 64 bit, so I was down to just a dual boot. 1 drive had 3
partitions - Vista/XP/Data and a 2nd small drive had music. All was fine
until 2 days ago when a virus got through Avast (groan!) on XP. I couldn't
get rid of it so, without thinking deeply, I reformatted the XP partition.
Then I found I couldn't boot to Vista. Why? Because the boot information had
been on the XP partition (God knows why Vista did that!). Next problem was
that - although I had reformatted the partition - I couldn't re-instal XP on
it. part the way through the installation it came up with 'disc error' but
there was nothing wrong with the disc (used SeaTools to check it). That 'disc
error' was something created by Vista. I could NOT get round it, no matter
what I tried. My only option was to reformat the whole drive and reload XP
and Vista. In the process I lost all my data, only the music on drive 2 was
retained. Colin

"Dennis Gordon" wrote:

> Man, this is the whole gamut of possibilities to ponder...;-) Thanks guys.
>
> I guess installing with the other drives not there, and selecting the boot
> drive in the BIOS would be the safest, since you have to reboot anyways to
> switch OS if the BIOS will allow me to select among 3 different SCSI drives
> (not sure about that), so one more time for the switch isn't that much of a
> hassle. OTOH, as Carlos & Charlie point out, a triple boot can be done, so
> I'm tempted to give that a try (on a weekend when I have plenty of time to
> fix my errors). I could also clone my C drive as it is (I have a spare scsi
> drive), try the triple boot, and if I run into problems, swap the clone
> drive back. If I wasn't so busy these days, I'd have tried it by now. Just
> don't want to do something dumber than usual.
>
>
> "Carlos" <Carlos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:59ACCE8E-2B6F-4F40-8FED-A1971B18055F@microsoft.com...
> > Dennis:
> > I am currently running triple boot.
> > 1.- Windows XP 32 bit
> > 2.- Windows XP x64
> > 3.- Windows Vista x64 rc1
> > No problems so far.
> > I have My Documents, Favorites and Outlook database in a separate
> > partition
> > shared by the 3 operating systems with absolutely no problems.
> > I can edit a document in Vista and later continue working on XP.
> > I can read my e-mail in XP x64 and later edit it in Vista x64.
> >
> > I am also planning to go to quad boot, adding Vista x64 rc2.
> > RC2 cannot complete the upgrade on top of RC1!
> >
> > Carlos
> >
> > "Dennis Gordon" wrote:
> >
> >> Okay, I've installed RC2 on a machine at home and one at work. Old P4s
> >> with
> >> half a gig of memory. Just playing around. Now I'd like to dual boot with
> >> XP
> >> at home on my new X2 machine, but lingering fears of angry phone calls
> >> from
> >> the missus ("Hey, this stupid machine you built isn't working right...")
> >> makes me wary. I just got another 15K SCSI drive and thought it might be
> >> a
> >> chance to add it to my work rig, which is XP / XP 64 bit. Then I could
> >> put
> >> RC2 on that and triple boot and really test it out.
> >>
> >> Charlie posted a link to his dual boot guide, but I can't find it. How
> >> well
> >> does 5744 play in a triple boot situation? I can't afford a system
> >> meltdown,
> >> but as long as x86 or 64 bit XP remains intact I'm willing to take the
> >> chance with Vista.
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>

John
Sun Oct 15 11:42:22 CDT 2006


" Because the boot information had
> been on the XP partition (God knows why Vista did that!).

Vista, like XP installs the boot files on the system drive (first drive in
boot order and active partition)