how do i partition my Hard Drive to have 2 Operating Systems?

Question

i have a recovery disk for XP that i would like to install on another partition of my hard drive. how would i patrition my hard drive? also could u tell me how to do it step by step? thx. also i have a toshiba computer running windows Vista home Premium 32-Bit

one more thing, i have a related question at this site: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkMB9i87D_AbKrWVxAxYJBHsy6IX?qid=20070811141434AA9orl1

Answer 1

First thing. Unless your hard drive is already partitioned, you will not be able to accomplish this without wiping out everything currently on your hard drive and starting from scratch. In this case, you will want to back up all important filed before proceeding.

Insert a Windows install disk and begin installing. As part of the install process you should be asked about reformatting your hard drive and creating partitions. What you want to do at this point is create a partition that is some size smaller than the largest available - say half. Once this completes you will continue installing windows as normal.

Once you're finished installing the first version of Windows, you will repeat the process with the other version of Windows. But when it asks about the partition, you want to select the unpartitioned space and install Windows on that space.

Now I don't know if Windows will automatically create a dual boot menu so you can decide which to launch at start-up. I believe that without a dual boot menu (or an autoexe.bat file) to direct the machine to a different drive, your machine would automatically boot whichever version of Windows is on the C: drive.

Answer 2

You are going to have several problems attempting this, first off you cannot use a recovery disk to install a full version copy of an operating system. A recovery disk hold directional files and pointers to a hidden partition located on a hard drive from a company like Dell or Toshiba. Recovery disks are not full version copies of the operating system, the load part of the files and redirects the rest from the hidden partition already installed on the hard drive.

Your next problem is going to be that Microsoft requires that you install operating systems in the order of release, so if you machine already has vista on it, you would have to erase the vista, install XP, then reinstall vista in a new partition. An example of this would be if you wanted or needed Windows 98, 2000 professional, XP Professional, and Vista Home Premium, you would have to install them in exactly that order, 98, then 2000, then XP Pro, and finally Vista.

If you decide to wipe the drive and start from scratch with full version copies, you would follow these steps:

1) Enter Bios
2) Set Boot Order to CD first, Floppy 2nd (if you have one), Hard Drive 3rd
3) Save and exit Bios
4) insert Windows XP Full Version CD into optical drive, and when the boot process says "Press any key to boot from the CD...", press a key.
5) Follow the installation wizard ignoring pressing any F keys unless you are using a 3rd party raid controller and have to install those drivers
6) When you get to the menu to press Install, Repair, or Quit, select Install
7) The CD will detect a copy of an operating system already installed, locate the option to view existing partitions, and delete the existing partition that contains Vista.
8) After you have deleted the current partition, highlight the unused RAW area, and select create a partition, erase the size in the box in the next windows and select something like 5000mb minimum upto half the capacity of the drive remaining
9) After creating this partition, allow the installation to format using the Full Format, not the quick format, and follow the additional steps to install Windows XP.
10) Once you have Windows XP fully installed and updated from Microsoft.....

Repeat Steps 1-6 above

7) This time when you are told it detects another operating system, goto the partitions again and highlight the unused RAW area and create a new partition using the remainder of the drive, then format using the full format not the quick format
8) proceed with the remainder of the install of the full versions of Vista as instructed by the wizards.
9) Once you have fully installed Vista and updated it from Microsoft, when you reboot, you will get a dual boot menu asking you to select which operating system you wish to start up, XP or Vista.

Answer 3

First thing. Unless your hard drive is already partitioned, you will not be able to accomplish this without wiping out everything currently on your hard drive and starting from scratch. In this case, you will want to back up all important filed before proceeding.

Insert a Windows install disk and begin installing. As part of the install process you should be asked about reformatting your hard drive and creating partitions. What you want to do at this point is create a partition that is some size smaller than the largest available - say half. Once this completes you will continue installing windows as normal.

Once you're finished installing the first version of Windows, you will repeat the process with the other version of Windows. But when it asks about the partition, you want to select the unpartitioned space and install Windows on that space.

Now I don't know if Windows will automatically create a dual boot menu so you can decide which to launch at start-up. I believe that without a dual boot menu (or an autoexe.bat file) to direct the machine to a different drive, your machine would automatically boot whichever version of Windows is on the C: drive.

Answer 4

Depends on which other OS you're tallking about. I got Linux and the installation cd partitioned the hard drive and installed Linux also.

HOWEVER, I don't recommend doing that. Why not just get another hard drive and install your alternate OS? I've found that my hard drive isn't quite big enough and my Windows suffers when I use it.

Good Luck

Answer 5

If you are going to partician the drive, you need to do that before you have an OS loaded.

Answer 6

ok contact this very nice smart man Allen Song..........................
[e-mail]