NEED XP wrote:
Hello every one, I just recently purchased an Acer Aspire M100 desktop
which has Vista home premium. My question is, does any one know if XP can be
installed as a dual boot on this pc, and if it's possible what type of driver
issues can occur? I'm asking these questions on this forum because the Acer
"help" center didn't give me any definent answers. Any help, or info will be
greatly appreciated thanks.
I forsee two problems:
1) Drivers
2) Boot setup.
For the drivers, go to "Computer", right-click, then click
"Properties", then click Device Manager. Expand the plus signs next to
each device and make sure that you have XP drivers for all these. XP
being a 7 year old OS is not likely to have built in drivers for newer
machines. If you can't find drivers, you'll end up having to do without
these devices when you run XP. This could be a minor inconvenience or a
show stopper depending.
Usually when setting up a dual boot system you install the most
current OS last since in this case Vista knows about XP, but XP doesn't
know about Vista. My guess is that you could boot from your Vista
install DVD (assuming you got one) and run the Recovery Console's
BOOTCFG application to make the boot setup work, but I have to emphasize
that this is a pure GUESS because I haven't done this myself. I have
used the XP Recovery Console's BOOTCFG successfully, but I know Vista
uses a new and different boot setup.
Whatever you do, if you proceed with the dual boot idea, I strongly
recommend that you make a complete image of your C: drive using
something like Norton Ghost or Acronis software to an external hard
drive prior to doing it. That way if it breaks, you have everything to
put it back to working order. Oh yes, I assume you know that each OS
has to go in a separate partition and how to accomplish that.
It sounds like you've got your work cut out for you. Good luck!