I want to dual boot Vista and XP on my computers. Vista for basic tasks and Windows XP for gaming. (I can't get Vista to run any of my games, there's graphic problems galore, it's just having way to many issues right now.) The thing is, I want to be able to have all my files accessible while running either OS. I want it to start up and then give me a choice to either run Vista or XP. So I'm guessing I'll need to install both on the same partition. How do I do this? I have Vista installed on both my computers already.

You don't (and shouldn't) install both on the same partition.

Install vista on a seperate partition and it should add an entry in the bootloader for XP and both partitions will be accessable from either OS since both will use a filesystem the other can read.

Atleast, thats how it normally is, I've never done anything with vista so you MAY have bootloader problems in which case you could just install grub

hi roryt2000
am using a dual boot system at present.
i installed vista on a seperate partition (hard drive in my case) and whehey off you go. lebowski's right you get the option to use vista or earlier version of windows (xp) in the bootloader.

there may be issues trying to open some files from xp on vista. and running programmes installed in xp on vista is very pot luck.

hope i've been of some help.

Well I'd really only be using XP for games since Vista has very poor game support right now.

I'll attempt to get it set up a little later. I'll post here if I run into any problems.

Ok so I installed Vista on another partition and everything went smoothly, I can see both drives in 'My Computer' with both installations. However, every time I start up it boots into XP automatically and doesn't let me pick Vista. What do I do?

Hi roryt, where'd you hear vista has poor support for games?

All i do on my computer at home is play games and i only have Vista....64bit vista too
I can play every game i want to.

The only draw back you'd have with Vista and Games on your machine, is the fact you have 768mb of ram....you'd want at least 2gb of ram to use Vista at any decent level of functionality and get the full experience.