Vista Dual Booting

Here's yet another decision you have to make before you install Windows Vista: whether or not you'll want to be able to dual boot.

In this advanced scenario, you install Vista onto the same PC that contains an older version of Windows, maintaining both of them side by side. Then, each time you turn on the PC, it asks you which operating system you want to run for this computing session.

Dual booting comes in handy when you have some program or hardware gadget that works with one operating system but not the other. For example, if you have a scanner with software that runs on Windows XP but not Vista, you can start up the PC in XP only when you want to use the scanner.

If you intend to dual boot, here's some important advice: Don't install both operating systems onto the same hard drive partition. Your programs will become horribly confused.

Instead, keep your two Windows versions separate using one of these avenues:

• Buy a second hard drive. Use it for one of the two operating systems.

• Back up your hard drive, erase it completely, and then partition it, which means dividing it so that each chunk shows up in the Disk Management window with its own icon, name, and drive letter. Then install each operating system on a separate disk partition.

• If you're less technically inclined, you might prefer to buy a program like PartitionMagic (www.partitionmagic.com). Not only does it let you create a new partition on your hard drive without erasing it first, but it's flexible and easy.

There's just one wrinkle with dual-booting. If you install Vista onto a separate partition (or a different drive), as you must, you won't find any of your existing programs listed in the Start menu, and your desktop won't be configured the way it is in your original operating system. You'll generally wind up having to reinstall every program into your new Vista world, and re-establish all of your settings, exactly as though the Vista "side" were a brand-new PC.