Possible to have a common progam directory between Vsita and XP?

Question, is it possible for me to have a common program directory between Vista and XP? By that I mean, 1 OS partition for Vista, 1 partition for XP, then a final partition for any programs I want to be common between them. Seems like it would work, but there might be some complications I haven't considered.

It seems like kind of a waste for me to have everything installed twice... Particularly those games that eat up 6GB each.

Not feasible since most programs are going to add registry entries, DLLs, and other system-dependent files that would need to be both duplicated and remain unaltered for both OSes to handle the application properly. More trouble than it's worth - even if it is possible.

Stand-alone applications could be done this way, however (independent EXE files and such).

nlite lets you change the path to your program files, so yes it's possible
Of course some installers will screw up and ignore that setting, etc. And there is always the problems of registry entries, COM DLLs and the like.

klingens said:

nlite lets you change the path to your program files, so yes it's possible
Of course some installers will screw up and ignore that setting, etc. And there is always the problems of registry entries, COM DLLs and the like.

Click to expand...

Changing the path can be done other ways, but I was planning on just manually installing some of those larger games in a common partition.

I might still give it a try with a few games.

I store my files in a common partition to share between xp and vista, but i havent gone as far as the actuall programs

n0aH said:

I store my files in a common partition to share between xp and vista, but i havent gone as far as the actuall programs

Click to expand...

Yeah, so do I. My 500GB drive is common data storage.