 |
 |
 |
Windows Vista Gamers Journal 3
Sunday, August 13th, 2006
If you’ve been following our ongoing journal of Windows Vista Beta 2 coverage, you’re no doubt 
aware that while Vista is pretty solid for a brand new operating system still in Beta, it’s not quite ready to use as one’s only OS. As such, we decided we needed to setup a dual-boot Vista / XP configuration on our VoodooPC test machine.
Our situation on this machine is somewhat unique in that we began with nothing but Windows Vista on a single primary partition on the HDD, rather than Windows XP. The first step in arranging a dual-boot configuration is always repartitioning the HDD. Different operating systems can’t live on the same partition (think C: drive) and thus we had to carve out some space for our XP install from the unused portion of the C: drive.
Windows has a built in partitioning tool called FDisk, but this wasn’t ideal for our purposes due to the fact that FDisk destroys all information on a drive when it creates new partitions. Partition Magic is a well known program that allows for graphical repartitioning without damaging information already on the drive. It costs money, however, which wasn’t ideal for our purposes due to the fact that we’re cheap. We found a great, and free, alternative to both FDisk and Partition Magic in GParted Live. The free software is based on a Live (as in bootable) version of Linux. You can download the .iso file, burn it to a CD, and then boot from the CD to create new partitions. GParted Live is free, fast, and easy.
After shutting down Vista we booted GParted and went to work. The program allowed us to create a new 20GB partition for the XP install without a problem. Once the new partition was created, we chose to format the new partition in NTFS. It was here that we made our first critical mistake, as we also chose to make the new XP partition a primary partition when we began the format. IGN: Windows Vista Journal 3
Popular Posts
Please read our Disclaimer
