Dual Boot Back-Up of Vista 32 and Vista 64

[Renderman21]

I have a dual booted Vista 32 & Vista 64 bit with service pack 1. The thing is, whenever I decide to backup the Vista 32 bit, it will only back-up the 32 bit which is a general case. But here is the actual problem starting as if I am on 64 bit environment and decide to back-up, it will back-up the two operating system (32 bit & 64 bit) which is default that I can not change. Is that normal?
please provide some views on it ...................

[Dr. V]

To begin with dual operating system you must install lower version of operating system and then go for higher version:

Step 1:

• Install XP proffesional or 64 bit XP proffesional.
• You may also install both the 2 operating system in any order.

Step 2:

• Install Vista or 64 bit Vista in another drive in any order.
  
• Its done.

IMPORTANT ISSUE

• Once you install both the operating system, the higher version takes the drive c:
  
• Suppose you install vista in d,e,or h;
  
• It will show as c drive:
  
• And lower version the vista installed drive should show the original name.

[SalVatore]

Partition your Hard drive with the help of Partition Magic software with operating system in XP and make an NTFS partion for Vista X 64. Although you can probably use the partition manager in Vista 32 bit too and a lot about instead. I already had XP 32bit and Vista 64bit installed. I remember to Ghost a copy of my system before hand as I have read of an issue with not being able to boot into your system afterward. Trust me that was not the case. Always back up your system regardless. You'll probably want to have a Bootloader such as EasyBCD or Vistaboot Pro on Vista and XP to easily manage the Opearting System order of priority, to change the name of and to tell the difference between the two Vistas when your system boots up.

Order of install: Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit, you may want to hide the two Vista Drives from each other like I did. Before I did so I found that a IE 7 download defaulted to my Vista 32biit drive's Download folder instead of the correct Download folder in Vista 64bit which I was using at the time

[jesse]

Follow these steps carefully:

1. First Create Free Space for Windows vista 32:
   
2. Before you start, you have backed up the drive that will host the two operating systems.
   
3. Modify the Windows Vista system partition to make space for Vista 32 using G Parted.
   
4. The G Parted Live CD ISO is available here – burn it to CD and boot the system from the disc. The version we used was 0.3.7-7.
   
5. As you boot from the G Parted LiveCD, as per your system, you should just need to select the auto-configuration boot option.
   
6. During boot process, press Enter twice when prompted to select the key map and language settings.
   
7. When the main GUI loads, right-click on the main Windows vista 32 NTFS partition and select Resize/Move.
   
8. Use the slider to reduce the partition size and free up enough room to install vista 32 (at least 5GB) and click Resize/Move.
   
9. The changes haven’t actually been made, they’ve just been scheduled to run. To commit the changes and resize the partition, click Apply. GParted will ask to confirm the changes – hit OK and away you go.
   
10. Boot the machine from the Vista DVD. Select the appropriate language and then "Install Now".
    
11. On the product key page, press SHIFT + F10 to launch a Windows PE 2.0 command window. Then type in DISKPART and press enter to get into the DISKPART utility.
    
12. Now type in LIST VOLUME - this gives you a readout of the volumes available on the system. Select the main Windows vista 32 volume by typing in SELECT VOLUME 0.
    
13. Now type in SHRINK. Vista will reduce the size the selected Volume by around 50%.
    
14. Using the Disk Management GUI is really no different to using DISKPART , but using the GUI does mean that you can make the changes within Vista before rebooting to install vista 32, without needing to use the Vista DVD.
    
15. Right-click on Computer and select Manage. In Computer Management, expand Storage and select Disk Management.
    
16. Right-click the primary partition and select Shrink Volume.
    
17. The default values which Vista provides represent a fairly aggressive shrink - as long as the values will give you enough space to install vista 32, accept the defaults and select Shrink.
    
18. Vista will churn away for a moment, and then you'll see the newly-created free space on the primary disk.

Now Install Windows vista 32:

1. When the Windows vista 32 setup reaches the point where you’re prompted where it is to be installed, you’ll see that while vista 32 can see the space we created earlier, it can also see the partition with Vista 64 on it.
   
2. You should be able to see the space you reclaimed on the disk earlier which has become "unallocated space".
   
3. Create a second partition using the Windows 32 installer screen above by selecting the free space on the drive and pressing "C" to create a partition.
   
4. Irritatingly, vista 32 assigns a drive letter to this partition C: which means that it will use the next available drive letter after all the other physical drives have been taken into account.
   
5. This means that the system drive of the vista 32 installation won’t be C:.
   
6. From vista 32 perspective this isn’t really a problem – it’s smart enough to figure out where everything should go – but some applications make assumptions about where they should install to, and can’t cope with a non-standard Windows configuration.
   
7. Nonetheless, install vista 32 as normal – there’s no need to do anything differently.
   
8. When the system reboots it won’t bring up a boot menu. Although vista 32 recognises the Vista 64 partition it doesn’t recognise Vista 64 itself. This is because the Windows vista 32 bootloader gets installed to the MBR, thus overwriting the Vista 64 bootloader and so Vista64 can no longer boot - the vista 32 bootloader can't be made to recognise Vista 64.
   
9. When vista 32 loads, open up Windows Explorer and you’ll see something interesting – a C: and (in this case) an E: drive.
   
10. The C: drive contains Windows Vista 64, and as Windows vista 32 can read NTFS partitions, it can browse and modify Vista’s file structure.
    
11. More importantly, applications which have installation paths hard-coded into their install scripts rather than using Windows system parameter variables could easily dump files into C: when they should be installing to E:. This isn’t such a great situation - really the optimal vista 32/Vista 64 dualboot scenario is to install Vista64 on a pre-existing vista 32 system.

1. Restore Vista 64 Bootloader and Enable Dualbooting
   
2. We need to restore the Vista 64 bootloader in order to restore Vista 32 functionality and configure Vista 64 / vista 32 dualbooting.
   
3. Also, it can be installed on Windows vista 32, so this means that there's no need for any more reboots or playing with recovery DVDs.
   
4. Once the vista 32 system is up and running, download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, and then download and install EasyBCD
   
5. Launch the application. EasyBCD isn't looking at the vista 32 bootloader - it has found the bootloader on the Vista 64 partition, so this is what you're directly editing.
   
6. Go to the "Add/Remove Entries" tab. You'll see that there's only one option available in the Vista 64 bootloader at the moment. In the "Add an Entry" section, change the Drive in the dropdown menu from C:\ to E:\. Change Type to "Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3", and the Name to "Microsoft Windows vista 32". Then click "Add Entry" and "Save".
   
7. Then go to the "Manage Bootloader" tab. Make sure that "Reinstall the Vista Bootloader" is selected and then click "Write MBR" and restart the system.
   
8. On reboot, the Vista 64 bootloader is now active and you'll see two boot options.