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Dual boot for Vista 32bit & 64bit

Dual boot for Vista 32bit & 64bit

Postby dieu7 » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:56 pm

Hi, I recently installed Vista Ultimate 64bit on my hard drive, only to find that an important piece of software I need for work will only work on the 32bit version of vista. So I installed Vista Ultimate 32bit on a seperate hard drive so as I could have one drive for business use and one for family etc. Will the Vista Boot Pro programe allow me to set up the boot process so I can start either system at start up and just swich between them as I need to? I don't want to purchase it and find I can't do this! Also do I need to connect both drives to the motherboard as "Masters" or as "Master & Slave" ?

Many thanks to anyone who can advise!

Philip.
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Re: Dual boot for Vista 32bit & 64bit

Postby leo27 » Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:22 am

going by the talk of master and slave for the hdd i assume your hard drives are ide. All the master and slave settings are is to tell the computer which hard drive (if there's more than one) is the main one (i.e master) and which is secondary they can both have an operating system on them so you need to have them connected as master and slave.

As far as the dual boot that your after i have no doubt it can be done with vista boot pro. i'm running a dual boot with xp x86 and vista x64. I'm sure someone with more knowledge of vistabootPRO will be along here shortly who could advise you there.
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Re: Dual boot for Vista 32bit & 64bit

Postby dieu7 » Sat Apr 11, 2009 1:02 am

Thanks Leo27, really appreciate the advice. Good luck in the Ashes this summer!!!
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Re: Dual boot for Vista 32bit & 64bit

Postby Grav!ty » Sat Apr 11, 2009 2:39 am

Set your original Vista installation drive as the 1st boot HDD and then keep your drives in that order as that will determine which drive is seen as the (System) drive according to Disk Management. Boot to that Vista installation keeping both drives plugged in, and check that it is the drive tagged (System) in Disk Management.

Now open VistaBootPRO, go to the System Bootloader page, select Vista bootloader>All Drives and then click Install Bootloader.

Next go to Manage OS Entries page and if your new Vista installation is not shown there, select Add New OS Entry, give a descriptive name, select Windows Vista for OS type and give it the drive letter C: then click Apply updates.

If for some reason you are not able to boot to that new Vista menu entry, go back to your original Vista installation and again on the Manage OS Entries page, and change the drive letter to that shown in Disk Management for the new Vista installation. I'm not exactly sure how your system is configured so it may be that it will want drive C: where the original boot system files (bootmgr and the folder Boot) are located or it may want the drive letter for the new Vista installation according to Disk Management.
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