It sounds as if you have one hard drive with two partitions, call them C:
and D:. As long as they are primary partitions, you can swap them using DOS
fdisk or Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk
Management, right click, Mark Partition as Active. This is for XP; I am
pretty sure it is the same or close for Vista. Make D: the active
partition, on the next boot it will be C: and you can install Vista there if
you like, avoiding use of Vista Boot Manager. Once you have Vista running
the way you like there, clone the partition to the original partition, mark
that partition as active, and it will boot as C:.
Another way to do this is to figure out how to use Vista Boot Manager and
bcdedit. You will also need a program called bootsect.exe from the Setup
DVD. There are lots of articles on TechNet,
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx.
Earle
"Ed H" <> wrote in message
news:%...
> Can this be done? I have Vista Home Premium x64 OS installed on dive C:\.
> On another partition, I'd like to do a piecemeal installation of Vista,
> install my apps and drivers, install personal data, clean it all up and
> then make an image of the partition. I then would like to replace my
> original setup on C:\ with the new image so I can have a working system
> while I patiently put a custom made one together.
>
> Thanks,
> Ed
> --
>
> Windows Vista Home Premium 64-BIT SP1
> Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83GHz
> 4.00 GB RAM
> 300 GB HDD
>
>