Best Way to partition for dual boot XP

Hi,
I have Vista Business installed on my laptop. I installed it myself and
it resideside on a single partion of my laptop. I would like to
partition my hard drive so I can dual boot XP. What is the simpilist and
safest way to do this? I am willing to purchase a partioning program.
What say you folks?
thanks

You can try shrinking the vista parition with vistas built in partition
manager.. but this does not always work very well... many times vista says
it cant shrink the volume and its very annoying.
see here http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6170510.html

if it fails then you can try this, since its free

Its a bootable live cd http://partedmagic.com/

Have in mind that since you will be installing XP after vista it will
disable the vista boot manager
and you will only be able to boot into XP.. (the vista parition will still
be there, you wont be able to boot into it though)

you can fix this problem if you download and install on XP this freeware

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Or by booting the Vista disk and selecting Repair>

see this guide
http://blogs.msdn.com/winre/archive/...sing-file.aspx


"SwampYankee" <> wrote in message
news:MPG.2223be6f31a11fa79896af@localhost...
> Hi,
> I have Vista Business installed on my laptop. I installed it myself and
> it resideside on a single partion of my laptop. I would like to
> partition my hard drive so I can dual boot XP. What is the simpilist and
> safest way to do this? I am willing to purchase a partioning program.
> What say you folks?
> thanks

There's no real best way. But there is more than one way. I do it with a
little bit of active partition switching.



Saucy

"SwampYankee" <> wrote in message
news:MPG.2223be6f31a11fa79896af@localhost...
> Hi,
> I have Vista Business installed on my laptop. I installed it myself and
> it resideside on a single partion of my laptop. I would like to
> partition my hard drive so I can dual boot XP. What is the simpilist and
> safest way to do this? I am willing to purchase a partioning program.
> What say you folks?
> thanks

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Have a read of the above link.

Should do it for you.

Cheers.

--
Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia


"SwampYankee" wrote:

> Hi,
> I have Vista Business installed on my laptop. I installed it myself and
> it resideside on a single partion of my laptop. I would like to
> partition my hard drive so I can dual boot XP. What is the simpilist and
> safest way to do this? I am willing to purchase a partioning program.
> What say you folks?
> thanks
>

"SwampYankee" <> wrote in message
news:MPG.2223be6f31a11fa79896af@localhost...
> Hi,
> I have Vista Business installed on my laptop. I installed it myself and
> it resideside on a single partion of my laptop. I would like to
> partition my hard drive so I can dual boot XP. What is the simpilist and
> safest way to do this? I am willing to purchase a partioning program.
> What say you folks?
> thanks
>

I used this as well and it worked for me.
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

You should back-up all your files before you do this!!

In article <3712F9E7-0CDF-41D6-82BB->,
says...
> http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
>
> Have a read of the above link.
>
> Should do it for you.
>
> Cheers.
>
>
Thanks all, thats what I was looking for!