help: how to have a dual boot system

could someone tell me;

1. If you wanted to have a dual boot PC is it better to have each OS on a seperate HDD?

2. Are there issues in coming to load at startup, I would be using XP 95% of the time and once in a way to play FSX want to switch to vista-64bit.

3. I do not know anything about coping certain files from one to the other so unless its all a simple procedure I might be better off not doing it.

comments please

You can partition the drive with the utility on the XP install disk. Just make sure you provide enough space for each OS. Install XP first, then install Vista to the other partition ( it will have its own drive letter designation.) You may have to used the bootsect.exe command to change a few things with the new windows vista boot manager (boot.ini is not used in vista) but other than that, it is really easy!

Resizing a partition has gotten fairly easy but there is a small risk, make sure you have backed up any essential information to another media before resizing.

I have just used paragon to create a new 200GB partition. So not sure if there is any advantage in having seperate disk for vista but assume not.

Next issue is I have only a dual core but I have overclocked FSB to 420 raising CPU to 4GHz. Will buying vista 64 offer any real benefit over 32 bit as far as running flight simulator X?
I assume anyway that changing the CPU to a Q9550 would actually be the best option but that will cost much more money

No Vista won't help your gaming performance. I triple boot XP32, XP64, & Vista 64 and everytime I launch the same game in each...(CSS is all I play) I'm always surprised by how much smoother XP is over Vista 64. Course if you need DX10 then you need Vista...unfortunately. If you just want a 64bit os to support more than 3.25GB of memory for gaming then I suggest XP64 SP2.

TimoneX said:

No Vista won't help your gaming performance. I triple boot XP32, XP64, & Vista 64 and everytime I launch the same game in each...(CSS is all I play) I'm always surprised by how much smoother XP is over Vista 64. Course if you need DX10 then you need Vista...unfortunately. If you just want a 64bit os to support more than 3.25GB of memory for gaming then I suggest XP64 SP2.

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Interesting, at the moment using FS2004 it only uses about 600k so i have enough of memory spare, I suppose FSX would use much more memory but if you say that there is no difference between the OS then I guess only reason to load vista 32/64 would be for DX10, now FSX is a DX10 game, so I wonder what would happen if I played it with DX9, I assume no real difference except the graphics would not be as good.

There is a difference, but Vista is well known to provide slower gaming performance than either XP32 or XP64.

It looks like you've got the vid card for DX10 and only vista supports it. I've found the differences between DX9 & DX10 versions of games to be fairly subtle to this point, though that will likely change over time. DX10 allows every light source to cast shadows, more and more detailed shadows, etc. They are prettier, but it's not exactly night & day yet and DX10 versions tend to be CPU & GPU workouts. I haven't played FSX in any DX form though so perhaps someone else can chime in on this topic.