Member Avatar for mercury049

Hi,
I have Vista and XP set as dual boot on my machine with no problems.
HOWEVER, I have noticed that on most of the forums I'm a member of that people are having a LOT of issues surrouding the install of Vista on their existing machines and some are even losing data over it.

EASIEST way to protect yourself is to download VMWare or Virtual PC and install it that way. I would suggest VMWare as they just added a base for Vista that's in Beta and VERY stable.

This is just a friendly suggestion to help those who aren't too sure about what they're doing when it comes to dual booting or installing Vista. Doing it via a Virtual Computer is SAFE and easy to work with.

Good Luck.
Mercury

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by 'Stein
'Stein commented: Good plan. -'Stein :) +4

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Generated

A short, practical addendum to the original advice from : virtual machines are a safe way to try an unfamiliar OS, but a few reproducible safeguards and clarifications will make testing Vista far less risky — and more reversible — even years after these posts were written.

Recommended checklist (safe, repeatable):

  1. Create a full disk image (not just a file copy) of the system drive and store it off-host; keep bootable rescue media so the image can be restored offline. (kbx.macrium.com)
  2. Test on a separate physical disk or a virtual machine with snapshots enabled. A spare internal/external drive avoids accidental changes to the original boot disk; VM snapshots let a tester revert instantly to a known-good state. (docs.oracle.com)
  3. If dual‑booting is required for real‑hardware testing, install to the spare disk with other drives disconnected so the existing bootloader and partitions are never touched; reconnect only after verifying the new install boots independently. (This reduces the chance of accidental overwrites that prompted @chunkmartinez’s concern.)

Licensing & realism notes: ’s licensing caution was well founded — Vista’s EULA historically restricted virtualization for some Home editions while allowing Business/Ultimate/Enterprise under conditions — and virtual guests can behave differently for drivers, DRM, and graphics compared with native hardware. For clarity, the licensing text and contemporary reporting explain those edition differences. (arstechnica.com)

If the bootloader is damaged after testing, Vista’s recovery environment and Bootrec.exe provide the supported repair sequence; for example:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

Microsoft documents use of these commands from the Windows RE. (support.microsoft.com)

Final note: Vista reached end of extended support in April 2017; continued use carries security risk, so testing should be confined to isolated hardware or VMs with no sensitive data. (learn.microsoft.com)

Recommended Answers

All 18 Replies

Member Avatar for 'Stein

EASIEST way to protect yourself is to download VMWare or Virtual PC and install it that way. I would suggest VMWare as they just added a base for Vista that's in Beta and VERY stable.

This is very true. Mercury is very correct in this aspect.

Again, like he said, I would reccomend running all new OSs from a Vmware or a Virtual Pc (the latter of which is free)

Member Avatar for Dortz

I have noticed that on most of the forums I'm a member of that people are having a LOT of issues surrouding the install of Vista on their existing machines and some are even losing data over it.

I know i sound scathing with this one, but shouldn't people be 'backing up' before installing a new OS anyway? I wouldn't want people who don't perform basic precautionary measures for thier data testing MY next generation OS anyway...

Of course, i wouldn't 'want' to mess anything up, and Virtual PC really is a great, clean, method for installing Vista (and testing just about anything for that matter) but even using that to install, i would have backed up, because nothing is 100%, no chance ever, just will not break.

Member Avatar for jamshid

I really dont see Vİsta... Could put some screen captures here.... i am wondering how is...

Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~

For Vitsa screenshots visit this link:

Member Avatar for jbennet

1. Vista doesnt install on virtual PC 2004 (dunno bout virtual server)
2. People shouldnt be installing devel versions if they dont know what th hell they are doing
3. People who do know what there doing should know to back up thier files and remember to keep thier previous OS media handy

Member Avatar for chunkmartinez

WO WO WO, are u saying that:

A. Newbies usually loose all of their data because they just try to install, and arent aware of partitioning for dual booting?

or

B. Vista is tricky to install and, will overwrite the whole HD regardless of partitions?

in other words, if i use a seperate partition to install it, will everything be cool?

Right now i have 3 win systems on my pc:
1.winXp(32)
2.winXp(64)
3.another winXp(32) (witch i will be getting rid of)

all on seperate partitions.

Is it pretty mutch like a win xp setup?

Oh yea and im refuring to Vista RC1

Member Avatar for Dortz

yeah. you should be fine. there have been issues where vista wants to be on the first partition on a drive, but that wasn't an issue with me when i installed RC1 on my machine.

Member Avatar for chunkmartinez

yeah. you should be fine. there have been issues where vista wants to be on the first partition on a drive, but that wasn't an issue with me when i installed RC1 on my machine.

K THANX MAN

Member Avatar for jbennet

yes vista is actually better in some respects at booting than XP was
the partitioning screen is like the one from something like fedora core 1 or 2

Member Avatar for chunkmartinez

Like fedora core cool!

Member Avatar for jbennet

yay ive just noticed now im "practically a master poster"

Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~

yay ive just noticed now im "practically a master poster"

Congratulations Mr. James :cheesy:

Hey I just noticed I am now... err.. "Oh I C" :eek:
Hm..
:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

Member Avatar for jbennet

are you a sponsor? or donator or mod? they get custom titles,

if you are a sponsor, is area 51 any good as ive always been interested in doing it

Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~

No I aint a sponsor, I am a moderator of Software development, Windows and Site Management. (The ones you see on top menu )

And Area 51 basically features the forums updates or suggestions from your part on what more should be implemented and what changes are to come up.

Member Avatar for blud

I thought I would expand a little bit on this thread.

I was a beta tester for Windows Vista, since well before the 'Beta' was actually released, and I am very confident in saying that due to the complexity of Windows Vista, there isn't a VM (Virtual Machine) enviroment out there that could maximize the performance of vista. While it is possible to install vista on a virtual machine (I've done it), I had a lot of issues that didn't happen when I had installed it on a real machine.

Microsoft has taken the liberty to explicitly state in Vista's ToS, that it can not be install on any virtualization enviroments at the current time. So even if you wanted to install Vista on VMWare, you would be breaking the Terms Of Service, and most likely wouldn't be getting the real experience from Vista.

One disclaimer I would like to make to this thread as well, is that people should not be confused about what a 'Beta' is. A 'Beta' is a piece of software that is not complete. Because of this, it will generally run much slower than the real product, because of the debugging features that are enabled, and will likely have many issues that you will not see in the final release. Now that the full version of Vista is released, the newer version will run a lot cleaner than any of the betas that were released before. People should be very skeptical of anyone that stated that it is a 'worse' operating system than XP. Since Vista is a new product, it is unlikely that many things will have drivers for it (although currently, my only problem is my video card), and is not intended for everyone to upgrade right away. I would give the OS 6 months before switching if you are not into 'testing' software for stability, to allow the hardware manufactors to start producing stable drivers.

commented: Well said. -'Stein :) +4
Member Avatar for 'Stein

Well said blud. :)

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