Windows 7: Vista- Windows7 RC1 dual-boot?

Hi all I have just joined this forum today because I have a couple of questions about installing Windows 7. My Gateway desktop has a 250gb harddrive which has Windows Vista SP1 installed on a 70gb C;/(active/boot) partition and a 10gbD/recovery partition and the rest of the drive is Unallocated- and this is where I intend to install Windows 7. However I don't want it to use all of the unallocated space, so during setup will I be able to limit how much space Windows 7 can use?
My computer shows these drives: Windows Vista (C
Local Disk(recovery) (D
DVD drive (E
SD/MMC (F
Compact Flash (G
SmartMrdia/xD (H
MS/MS Pro (I
When I install Windows 7 how will my drive nomenclature change other than it will obviously grow by at least one letter? Can someone on here predict what drive letter Windows 7 will assign itself and how the others will change?
As i understand it when Windows 7 installs it replaces Vistas bootloader with it's own and adds Vista to it so one can then boot either system. Is this correct?
If so when I decide to remove it by simply reformatting the drive Windows 7 installed itself to how do i get my Vista bootloader back so i can boot Vista?

Hello ManyBeers, and welcome to Seven Forums.

This tutorial below can help show you how to dual boot with Windows 7 and Vista. When you get to step 2, you can specify how much of the unallocated space you want to use to create a new partition with to install Windows 7 on.

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks for responding Shawn. So according to that tutorial i will be able to determine how much space Windows 7 will use and i will also assign it a drive letter myself. Correct? I'm assuming this is done during the actual installation of Windows 7.

What about my last question concerning the bootloader? Anything?

It would be best to create the partition from within Vista first as described in the tutorial, then select it while installing Windows 7. You should not have any problems with the boot file when dual booting like this with Windows 7 or Vista.

OK thanks.

Two possibility:

If you install Seven from Vista (not as un upgrade but full install on empty partition) Seven will use the drive Letter as it appaers under Vista.

If under Vista the partition on which you install Seven is the one with Z: so, after installation Seven will use Z:
Then the drive letter assigment will be exactly the same than under Vista

If you make the installation from a DVD boot, so Seven doesn't know the driver letter assigment under Vista. Then Seven will use C: whatever is the partition you'll choose.
After that Seven will make its own letter assigment based on the driver and partition "position"


Seven Bootloader is the same as Vista Bootloader. They don't make new one for each new Windows version. Seven Bootlaoder is still based onBCD introduced with Vista.
So Seven will just add its own boot information into the bootloader which is allready in place.


Format Seven's partition and modify the bootloader under Vista. That's all you have to do to clean it

Juste one thing you have to take care: Be sure that the bootloader is installed on the Vista partition, or other partition than the Seven's one.

The bootloader is allways installed on the first and active primary partition on the first HDD.

You're welcome ManyBeers.

LePoilu has some good information as well in his post to.

I see. Yeah I was worried about reformatting the Windows 7 partition when the time comes and nuking my bootloader. I did that one time on my laptop with a WindowsXP Debian dual-boot setup . When i reformatted the Debian partition I nuked Grub and was unable to boot into XP. I now have a XP-Ubuntu setup but Ubuntu is booted from XP's bootloader and if i ever reformat the Ubuntu partition it does not affect the bootloader.

Thanks for the info.

ManyBeers,

In the worst case, you can usually just run a Startup Repair to repair the boot file for Vista if something should happen if you wanted ti format Windows 7.

Hi,

For anyone else reading this thread:

On NT6 systems (Vista and Win 7) the functions previously performed by ntldr have been split between bootmgr , which as Le Poilu says will be on the Active partition, and winload.exe ( which I suppose should now be called the bootloader), which will be on the o/s partition.

Hope it helps