[Mayro]

What is the best way to set this up so that Xp doesnt know that Vista exsists, and Vista doesnt know that XP exsists?

The reason I ask, is last time I tryed to do a dual boot of XP and Vista, Vista had decided it was god and when I would boot into vista, it would reasign my XP driver as a differnt drive letter and put its self as drive C:.

I would like to dual boot these on seperate hard drives and keep them independent of eachother.

I would also like it to default boot to XP without any intervention from me, and use like a button combination, or use the f8 boot selector from my asus mobo.

Any other ideas for doing this stuff is appreciated. Thanks

[H82LUZ]

Yes make sure both are installed with say the xp drive not connected ( just remove the power plug with system unplugged ) then install Vista on its own drive,Then when both are done you can select F8 and then the drive you want.Vista does seem to asign drive letters differnt ( So what i did was name each one VISTAx64Ultimate and WINXPSP2) To tell them apart.

[OldBuzzard]

HyperOS will do that nicely, and let you do it all on one HDD:

HyperOs Systems

I would highly recommend the 22 system version, if you have multiple HDDs and multiple partitions on them. The 11 system version will still work, but if you have more than 11 total partitions, then it won't 'see' all of your partitions in it's GUI. Even though the GUI won't see them, it won'e affect the operation any. It's just that most people like to see ALL of their partitions in "My Other Computers" which is the GUI for HOS.

I'm currentlly have 6 systems installed. One XP SP2, Four XP x64, and one Vista 64. It's a good way to have single purpose systems that don't get all cluttered up and bogged down by too many applications.

As for Vista "hijacking" the C: partition, the way to get around that, at least if you are using HyperOS, is to install XP first, and then install Vista from within XP. IF you do a Vista install by booting from the DVD it will ALWAYS assign itself as C:. If you just let the DVD auto-run from windows, it will take the partition letter than you install it to.

Another nice thing about installing Vista from within XP is that you can copy the Vista DVD to one of your HDDs, and then in XP run the SETUP.EXE file and Vsta will install in about 30-35 minutes.

THere is also a site that has a nice little utilitity that will allow you to install XP or Vista from a USB RAM drive. I can install XP and XP x64 in right at 16 minutes using USB RAM drive. You have to use Nlite and make a slipstreamed, unattended version, but it's well worth it. Here is the site that has the info on it:
Install XP from USB - MSFN Forums

I haven't tried installing Vista from a RAM stick, as 35 minutes or so from the HDD is fast enough for me. I may give the RAM drive a try with Vista just to see if it does install in less than 35 minutes.

DISCLAIMER: I beta test for HyperOS, so I could be seen as biased, but take a look at it anyway.

[H82LUZ]

OLd that sounds good to me, On my way try that out.