Dual Boot

you can dual boot either using the NT loader or GRUB

I've done it with XP Pro and Widnows Server 2003 before but its a pain in the ass

Ok thanks....im probably not going to put in a dual boot if its such a pian in the ass.....but what do you use windows server 2003 for?????

web development. I got it through college

I have had XP Pro for some time and just today installed Vista Home Premium. It would not allow me to upgrade XP Pro because it said I would need the Business or better version. So it did a fresh install on a second drive d: in my computer and created the dual boot option automatically. Now I can boot from either os :)

Unfortunately it would not copy the installation files from XP to Vista so I will have to reinstall everything myself.

That is true. You can't go from XP Pro to Premium as an upgrade. The upgrade options are

XP Home --> Vista Home Basic (who'd want it anyway?)
XP MCE --> Vista Home Premium
XP Pro --> Vista Business

You can upgrade from any flavor of XP to Ultimate Edition though.

I want to use a dual boot with home premium and business; will i be able to use all my documents and programs which are installed on the "home side C:"?

My other option is to do c clean istall and trck down all my software and drivers; which I am sure I don't have all the discs.:)

I want to use a dual boot with home premium and business; will i be able to use all my documents and programs which are installed on the "home side C:"?

My other option is to do c clean istall and trck down all my software and drivers; which I am sure I don't have all the discs.:)

You'll be able to access your documents, & some programs you can start directly from the exe albeit often with unpredictable results, overall because you'd be on another installation, you'd need to install programs again.

If you dual boot then you could use 1 installation to download all the drivers you need to your comp, then from the other OS install them all again (since they will need to be), or before you do a clean install if staying single boot, download all the drivers you need beforehand & burn them to disc or similar. ;)

I enjoy multibooting Vista Home with Ubuntu *nix
Yu might think about it, no pain!

If you're running XP and go to install Vista, the install process will allow you to make the machine duel boot as long as you have enough disc space and install Vista in a new partition.

On the item of sharing documents... I used to use Partition Magic, one of the disc mgmt programs around, to make all my dual boot machines, but I also use it to dice up the hard drive, usually before I put an OS on it. What I do is create a logical drive that I give the disc label EXTRA to, and both partitions can see the logical drive and access files from it. Another reason for doing this too, is that if your OS gets corrupted, you can still access your important files from the OS in the other partition. Almost invarriably...the logical drive isn't touched if the OS gets corrupted. I've been doing this for years.

I used to teach and I've had my laptop configured with as many as 4 operating systems on it. PM would supply a boot manager you could use, allowing you to select which OS you want to boot.