Dual Boot question

[Jonno]

I've had issues dual booting 2 Windows operating systems in the past, and I've got a question about win7 install. I've got Win Vista Home Premium 64 bit, and I'm wanting to install Win7 to try it. Are there known issues with dual booting 2 Vista's? Thanks

 

[Night Hawk]

Welcome to the Se7enforums! Jonno

Two Vistas? I don't know who told you that one. The best thing to look over carefully would be the tutorial on just how to go about setting up a dual of Vista with "Windows 7". http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/5166-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-vista.html

 

[Jonno]

Thank you Nighthawk, noone told me about the problems, I've experienced them myself (XP and Vista with 3 attempts, all failed). I've yet to have any problems with Linux and Windows dual booting, and I've tried to mod the Vista boot.ini, but it doesn't affect the boot.. I just dont wanna have my old Vista install get trashed by Win7.

 

[Night Hawk]

First of all Vista uses a new BCD store no longer seeing the old boot.ini XP used. When going to install 7 to a second primary or on a second drive if you plan to keep the Vista host drive set as default 7 will become the default OS at first.

The two entries for Vista(below Windows 7) and "previous version of Windows"(above the Windows 7 entry) in the boot options menu for 7 will be where you select Vista from the list there to boot into that installation.

Once 7 is on you can go right into the msconfig utility boot tab to set Vista as the default OS there as well as using the BCD Editor or the free EasyBCD tool mentioned in the installation guide. Personally to avoid losing the new 7 splash screen when first starting up I went with the x86/x64 BCD Editor found at Ladislav Zezula

When opening up the zip file you'll see two folders one for the 32bit and the second for the 64bit Vista or 7. Both Vista and 7 use the same type of boot loader while the 64bit Windows still requires the 64bit BCD Editor tool since the 32bit only produces the non compatible with 64bit errors since you are presently running Vista 64.

The old XP/Vista dual boots you saw problems with were likely a result of not having copied the XP boot files onto the Vista root or made the corrections needed in the copy of the boot.ini file if Vista was on a separate drive from XP. With Linux the EasyBCD tool can be a help there as well as you probably having used the Grub method.

The reason for the BCD Editor x64 tool is not only for setting the default OS and renaming entries in the BCD store but to remove the "previous version of Windows" entry you won't using once 7 is on since you are adding that along with the present Vista installation. The 7 installer will automatically include Vista in it's own BCD by rewriting the present BCD store already on the drive as long as you have the Vista drive plugged in if 7 is being installed onto another drive.