Adding Vista to Your WinXP Computer System

Adding Vista to Your WinXP Computer System

The best of both the Windows XP universe and Vista at your beck and call

Hello traveler! Welcome to our continuing hubs on everything Vista, today well be discussing the steps you will need to take to load Microsoft's newest operating system Vista onto the hard drive on which you already have Windows XP installed. This will allow you to have the best both operating systems, a helpful thing considering the individual strengths of each operating system, if you're ready its time to hit the road to dual-boot heaven.

If your current computer system has at least 20GB of free space on its hard drive (enough for Vista, your applications, your data, and some extra free space), adding Windows Vista Home Basic (you will need at least 40GB for any of Vista's other versions) to your WinXP system is actually pretty simple. The basic process involves creating a new blank partition from your drive's free space, installing Vista, and then setting up the boot menu.

First things first, backup your computers important files to a separate drive or device, because there is a small, theoretical chance, this process could fool with your drive's partition table (a permanent data structure that describes how information is laid out). And defragment your drive might make the repartitioning go faster and decrease the chance for errors, to do this right click your hard drive in your My Computer window, choose Properties from the pop-up menu, and then click the Tools tab and then the Defragment Now button. When the Disc Defragment windows opens, click the handy Defragment button and the process will begin.

For the next part, you will need to get a non-destructive partition utility, which is one that can alter the size of an existing hard drive partition without removing all the information contained on it. One widely used commercial partition manager is Norton Partition Magic, but most Linux LiveCD's, such as Ubuntu, have an included open-source equivalent - like GParted orQTParted - that will only cost you a few moments of you're life and a blank recordable CD on which to put it. Also, you can download the latest GParted LiveCD from gparted.sourceforge.net, which is what we use to illustrate the next step, by the way. If you do decide to create a LiveCD with GParted, you will need software or an add-on that can record an ISO file to a blank recordable CD. Windows included utility isn't enough to complete the job.

Using your partition utility, select your hard drive and resize the existing partition to be smaller, creating at least 20GB of unused/unassigned memory space, and then create a new primary partition in the new space. In GParted, select your drive from the list at the bottom of the window that appears and choose Resize/Move from the Partition menu. We entered the number of megabytes we wanted our new partition to be, in the Free Space Following field and then clicked the Unallocated Space in the drive list and choose New from the Partition menu. We then created a new Primary Partition, chose NTFS, and then clicked the Add button. Then select Apply Operations from the Edit menu, confirm the procedure and wait for a few minutes while the process runs its course.

Next, we booted from out Windows Vista installation disc to perform an installation. We choose a Custom (Advanced) installation when prompted and then selected the newly created, empty partition. We clicked the Format button (to format the partition) and then clicked Next. Once the formatting of the new partition was finished, Vista actually installed itself as it is normally designed to do.

Were you paying attention to the boot process, if you were you might have noticed a new screen appearing at startup, this is the Windows Vista Boot Menu. By default it will display your two installed operating systems: "Microsoft Windows Vista," which is the default setting, and "Earlier Versions Of Windows," which is the Windows XP operating system. Do nothing at this time and Vista will boot, select Earlier Versions Of Windows to have WinXP boot.

If you check everything and your okay with the set up the way it is, then the job is complete. However, if you'd prefer WinXP to be the default operating system, follow the next few steps. First, boot into Vista, right-click Computer, and then choose Properties from the pop-up menu. Next, click Advanced System Settings and then click the Startup And Recovery Settings button. This displays the Startup and Recovery window, where you can select the default OS and change the length of time the Boot Menu will appear, just set it to your specifications and off you go.

Well that's it for another hub on everything Vista, hopefully this hub allowed you to have both Windows XP and Vista on your one computer. Join us next time as we will discuss how to add WinXP to your Vista computer system. Until then traveler, surf safely, and happy hubbing!