XP & Vista on same HD?

[xtreme_boi]

Technology question for the wizz kids.

Last week I managed to install Vista ULTIMATE on my system, and got rid of XP (for a short while!). However I came across a problem with my SpeedTouch 330 modem. Basically I didn't have the correct drivers, for it to work with Vista (which didn't allow me to connect to Internet). But after a little research (earlier today) I read that if I downloaded the 64-bit driver for XP, then it can possibly work with Vista.

So instead of me wiping my HD clean of XP, and starting again with VISTA... is it possible to install TWO O/S on ONE Internal HD? If so, how do I go about doing it CORRECTLY?

I do also have a 250GB External HD, so could also install Vista on there. But not sure how to configure it, so system boots from external HD, not internal.

Need a bit of help, please?

 

[cava83]

you can partition the drive. It is not ideal to have to OS on the same partition.

Then when you boot up, you can choose which one, i.e vista or xp.

Or what you can do is run something like VM ware, and then have XP as your main OS and then Vista as a Window OS, issue with this is that you have 2x OS and your resources are more.

You can partition your drive using partition magic.

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

I'm doing this at the moment.

One hard disk split into 2 partitions, one with the XP install and the other with Vista.

Had a bit of bother when I did mine as I installed Vista first, then XP. When you install XP the XP bootloader takes over and as they have changed the way Vista loads, the XP loader was unable to see Vista as an option. Had to download Vista Boot Pro ( http://www.vistabootpro.org/ ) to sort it out. To edit the boot loader in Vista its not quite as simple as in XP where you can change the boot.ini file, so this little util was very helpful.

Anyway in heinsight I have since read that its best to install XP first then Vista, so when you install Vista it will see XP and give you the options on boot.

Hope that makes some sort of sence.

Chris