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[darkice Profile]

Hello,

I just built a new PC with only SATA drives and I currently have 4 disks with Windows 7 x64 installed on the C drive. Drives D, E, and F are loaded with a few programs but I am looking to install Vista on drive F. I never used Vista and just want to try it out.

How do I go about installing Vista after 7, and still be able to dual boot between the two? I don't want to have Windows 7 reinstalled. I probably should have installed Vista first and then 7, but at that time I was only thinking Windows 7, and I already have it running with all my programs and settings configured.

Thanks.

[shreader]

You should have no problem instaklling Vista after Windows 7.

Leave all the hard drives plugged in & put the Vista DVD in the Drive & restart PC.
Depending if the BIOS boot priority is set to boot from the DVD (you may have to change that) press any key when asked.
Vista starts loading files.
Choose the custom installation & choose the new drive you want Vista installed on, one can do a quick format now if wanted (@ options button).
Hit the next button & Vista installs.
You will now have a Boot Menu popup & Vista will be the default OS (this can be easily changed w/ DualBootyPRO).
You may need to install the chipset drivers (from the manufacturer/MB DVD) to get ethernet, etc to work.

Done

[Sullivan29 Profile]

I just built a system and ran into the problem that my second SATA drive was not visible in Explorer. All I had to do to fix the problem was go to Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Manager. As soon as I opened that tool, I was informed by the OS I had a disk that was not initialized. I initialized the disk, and created a new volume on it. This involved setting my desired drive info (e.g., drive letter, file system, etc.), and then I had the volume formatted. I used quick format. Once that was done, the drive was available via Explorer.