Running XP & Vista on computer

I have recently purchased an ACER M1100 Aspire desktop (Windows Vista Home Basic 32 bit) . As I live in Spain all computers here come with Spanish O/S so I duly installed Vista in English and re-activated with Microsoft, all the Acer drivers and extra's and all seems well, just installed the SP1. The computer has AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual core processor, 2GB Ram with a 250 hard-drive and was a very good price indeed. I want to know if I can install Windows XP Pro on the same computer as an alternative OS ? Obviously it would have to be on 'D' drive …. would there likely to be any conficts between the two ? And how can I access either one after booting up the computer ? Any suggestions/help would be much appreciated.

Greetings Luckydog1

From what I read that machine ACER M1100 Aspire desktop comes with one drive. a 250gb drive. What is this "D" drive you are talking about.

Did you partition the drive into two or more partitions yourself? Is this "D" drive empty? I am betting not. Probly your recovery partition for restoring the computer.

If you want the easiest way to do a dual boot is to aquire another hard drive and install it to the tower.

Spelled out in this link at Geek 2 Go

Dual booting using two drives.

But you want to access them after you booted already? I am assuming you mean you dont want to reboot your computer and make a choice. You want to lauch Xp from a vista desktop? Then you need to learn about Virtual Machine software.

Microsoft Virtual Machine

The web is full of references to dual booting vista and Xp, Google search and you will find many ways of doing this. But requires you to know how to disk manage and edit system files.

Only thing I would mention is that you may find that ACER did not provide drivers compatible with XP for that model.

If they made the computer for Vista they have no reason to create drivers to support a older operating system. Yes Xp is considered a older operationg system. They are not obligated to. That would be something you might want to checkout before spending too much time seeing if it can be done.

So yes you can dual boot multiple operations systems.

Good Luck

Kaz

Thanks Kazzoo for your prompt reply. In answer to your questions …. the computer came with ONE hard drive but was split into 'C' & D' (111GB each) with factory set O/System 'hidden' as a partition on the 'C' part of the drive. Acer provide an E-RECOVERY programme so that the original factory installed OS etc can be completely recovered. Sadly if the one hard drive on the computer fails all is lost. Reading your reply I might just get myself another older computer and install XP on that, then if all goes 'tits-up' I still have my Vista on a seperate machine. One final question if you do not mind answering, can I make a disk copy (DVD) of the Vista system, drivers, programmes etc so enable me to re-install in the future ? As I see it, my 'c' drive has 93 GB free which means the hidden partition and O/S is using up 18 GB of space - is this a true figure ? Thanks again and I have a few more questions to post in other sections fo the forum.

Greetings Luckydog1 Looks like the numbers add up correct. What you are wanting to do is called making a image of the drive. Sometimes this is called cloning. So if something goes wrong you can then copy exactly back what was there at the time of making the image. One popular piece of software is called Acronis True Image. Best practice would be to put this on a separate drive, but you could in fact put a image to DVD's. Acronis true image 11 home is the latest edition, Around 50 dollars or so. www.acronis.com Regards Kaz

Thanks for help and info …. much appreciated - love the dollar's price, against the Euro & Pound that looks a great price !!!! lol

Usually there is a way to create a recovery CD (or CDs) that comes with the system.

Sure enough, I checked the Recovery Guide and it talks about burning recovery CDs.

Thanks Ztrucker ….. I will maybe look at this option, looks like I might need quite a few DVD blank disks as I am sure it will copy everything that is currently on the 250 GB HD (which I pressume includes the Acer hidden partition) I will try and keep you posted …. I always seem to worry that you never know if a back-up made by yourself is going to work until you try it after formatting the whle HD and finding the disks are damaged or you have not done exactly as instructed. Thanks again

I don't think it copies the entire hd, I think it only backs up the hidden recovery partition. 1 CD will probably suffice.