Dual boot guidance

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My desktop (HP, quad core AMD, 4GB, lots of disk . . .Vista Home Premium) takes “forever” to boot (five or more minutes) and occassionally goes off into the ether and won’t respond for five or more minutes.

I come up to the point of deciding to do a clean install then get cold feet because of the very comfortable environment I’ve built over the past several years and cringe at the thought of trying to rebuild it in a half day or less. I need the system to do real work.

The notion of leaving my existing environment in place and doing the clean install in a partition seems attractive. My belief is that I could continue to do real work in the existing (and sometimes frustrating) environment while doing the clean install in the partition. That way I could spread the work out over several days and be reasonably sure the clean install has most of the key apps working before decommissioning the old partition.

Question: Is this a rational, plausible approach to my issue?

Question: Is there a “how-to” written in a style more user friendly than what I’ve found on the Microsoft site?

Question: do I run into licensing issues since I want to install multiple copies of the same (serial number) operating system?

Any guidance or other options would really be appreciated.

Thanks,

John Blair

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My desktop (HP, quad core AMD, 4GB, lots of disk . . .Vista Home Premium) takes “forever” to boot (five or more minutes) and occassionally goes off into the ether and won’t respond for five or more minutes.

I come up to the point of deciding to do a clean install then get cold feet because of the very comfortable environment I’ve built over the past several years and cringe at the thought of trying to rebuild it in a half day or less. I need the system to do real work.

The notion of leaving my existing environment in place and doing the clean install in a partition seems attractive. My belief is that I could continue to do real work in the existing (and sometimes frustrating) environment while doing the clean install in the partition. That way I could spread the work out over several days and be reasonably sure the clean install has most of the key apps working before decommissioning the old partition.

Question: Is this a rational, plausible approach to my issue?

Question: Is there a “how-to” written in a style more user friendly than what I’ve found on the Microsoft site?

Question: do I run into licensing issues since I want to install multiple copies of the same (serial number) operating system?

Any guidance or other options would really be appreciated.

Thanks,

John Blair

John,
Hello, brief answer is yes.. and not sure about licensing. I presently am “quad booting” three iterations of Vista Home Premium, and Linux Mint “Helena”. I do this with a mixture of separate “Hard Drives” and a “partitioning scheme” I use Neosmart Technologies EasyBCD (free whatever) and have also used Vista Boot Pro (ProNetworks) also(free whatever) to do the “dual boot thing”. Basically You can “partition off” (Vista Disk manager) one of your drives and name it whatever letter, and add a description that is not being already used, I use EASEUS partition manager 4.0 professional also (free whatever) I like to use a separate HD ( so whatever i do is on its own) as they are now reasonably priced Just purchased a 1TB Hitachi Desk Star from Directron for $80.00 with shipping. Using EasyBCD or Vista boot pro couldn’t be easier … EX: With EasyBCD Down load and install, boot it up, the program will guide you to back up your MBR ….Do so… then select which system that you want as a “default” …. Select the “time out ” that you want (boot time choice) BCD then does the rest. If at some point you want to go back …. you have the MBR backup and BCD does this as well. So now when you “bootup” you will have a choice as to which system you want. Post back if you have any questions Regards Fred
Edit: John one thing i forgot to mention that might be of some confusion. When you “boot up” windows will make which ever system that you choose(new or your old primary)” C:” and the other will be whatever you called your “new” partition or hard drive. That’s why it is a good practice to add “tags” or names to your drives or partitions. IE: D: DATA … E: SP-NEW, etc.

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OK first …READ THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE. It will explain the boot process and how to fix the boot process for dual boot. this is the best I have ever found for setting up vista machines
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/index.html

I use Bootit NG and it will help a lot as a boot manager. I never use the windows boot manager at all.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

just to note.. its way easier to install on a new hard drive then break up the original drive in partitions …you might consider cloning the drive then really digging into the clone and see what the issue is…though starting new is a very good option

good luck

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