Sharing My Dual Booting Experience

This thread is to pass on some hard learned lessons and though your experiences may be somehow different from mine with different setups, this information learned the hard way may just help someone avoid the troubles I ran into, and may make your own dual booting experience a joy instead of a disaster.

My adventure started dual booting between Vista Home Premium 64bit and WinXP Pro 32bit, first off, this is really not a good idea, Why?

Because they are 2 completely different operating systems, the 64bit requiring high levels of memory to get the best overall performance and the 32bit being maxed at 4G and even though WinXP Pro can run its max memory, doesn't mean it can do it problem free or at its best performance level, my own past tests of memory amount usage with WinXP Pro 32bit revealed 2G as the sweet spot of memory for that OP/SYS.

So if you dual boot the 64bit and 32bit with only 2G of memory to favor the 32bit OP/SYS, you seriously impede the performance of the 64bit operating system, so since memory is so cheap and we normally want to be able to use what we already paid for, it seemed to me the dual boot at 4G between the 2 OP/SYS would be a great compromise.

There is the Word; Compromise, when you allow that word into the equation neither will run at its full potential.

Why dual boot between WinXP and Vista in the first place?

Because there are 32bit applications that WinXP32bit runs flawlessly, Vista64 does not, and even though WOW is part of the 64bit Vista experience, it doesn't work for every WinXP application.

So for my part dual booting was allowing me to run the older applications I didn't want to depart with problem free on WinXP, and enjoy the DX10 added experience in my gaming with Vista.

I chose to dual boot by installing each OP/SYS on its own HDD and use the F8 boot option to select the HDD to boot into, seemed great at first until I discovered my Vista Restore points were disappearing every time I booted into WinXP, this is a known problem addressed by the Microsoft website, of which there is a work around listed but for my situation was discovered too late.

I'll track down that link and post it here:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185
If anyone has tried this work around and it has worked, would you share your experience Please?

My solution to the problem was after the fact, and the fact being a complete Vista64 HDD format and reinstall of the OP/SYS, because unlike WinXPs wonderful Repair Installation of the OP/SYS, not loosing any files and settings, it does not work like that with Vista of any flavor.

My solution may be past your ability or determination to incorporate in your setup, but it works flawlessly!

I'm presently dual booting WinXP Pro 32bit and Vista Home Premium 32bit, using 2G of system memory, basically the memory amount sweet spot for both the 32bit operating systems, using a HDD power controlling switch, preset before booting to the desired OP/SYS to boot into, completely eliminating the lost restore point Vista XP problem, because the HDDs are invisible to each other.

Only the boot HDD is powered, the non boot HDD has no power or signature to see, so the conflicts are completely eliminated, the 2 way switch controls the power to the HDD, the SATA data cable stays hooked to the M/B, all switching is done with the system powered down before booting.

So I simply flip the switch to the OP/SYS HDD I want to boot into and punch the computers power button to boot the machine into that desired OP/SYS, its actually like having 2 completely different computers in one, and works great.

Anyone running Vista64 with more memory than 4G, put dual booting a 32bit OP/SYS completely out of your mind, you're way past that possibility, of course thats just my suggestion, I'm sure someone will try it.

I truly hope this thread will help someone! Thanks for your time! Ryan