Ohkay guys. Here's my problem. I have two IDE hard drives. One primary 80gb which has two partitions and one secondary 320gb having four partitions. Now i have changed drive letters like this: Disk 1 80Gb [C & J] Disk 2 320gb [D,E,F,G] Please note that G is actually the primary partition i.e C of this harddisk] As i said that i have changed the drive letters so i hope i am clear uptill now. Now i want to install Vista 64bit onto my 320 gb but i have the following questions. 1. Will vista still recognize the G: volume as primary of my disk or will it not because of the drive letters that i have changed in xp? 2. Is there any way that i wont lose my xp and somehow make it a dual boot with vista as the primary booting OS? And if yes then how am i supposed to install it. Should i unplug my 80gb first and then install vista onto the 320gb or what ? Please help me with this.

Dumb MS has this deal with the first bootable partition. It normally is called C: no matter what. NTFS partitions would be visible unless encrypted. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Use BOOTitNG to make a disk image of XP. It must be BOOTitNG or some other disk imager remains totally independent from any OS. Acronis for example won't do it. Then delete XP. You must COMPLETELY delete xp.... a quick format won't do it. Vista will still see parts of XP. You must do a FULL format of the old xp partition. Install Vista as normal to the root partition of your primary drive. Then install your XP image on any other partition you wish.... (you must however make sure that the partition you want to install xp on is as big or bigger than the original parition that xp was on in the beginning). Make sure you edit the boot.ini file to reflect the proper drive/partition that you put it on. You can either choose to use a 3rd party boot manger such as BOOTitNG or you can manually edit the vista boot loader with a free program called bcd edit to include XP in your vista boot options menu. Pleas note... if you use this method then these OS's will be completely independent from each other and each one will see itself as being on C drive when it is running. In other words, when xp is running it will see itself as being on C and vista as being on J or some other drive. When Vista is running it in turn will see itself as being on C and XP will then be on J or some other drive. Because these OS's are running COMPLETELY independant from each other (unaware that one another exists) you are free to change the drive letting in either one of the OS's without affecting the other.

". Is there any way that i wont lose my xp and" You have to backup to be sure. Most people can install Vista and it mostly works fine in a dual boot. There are plenty of how to's and sure enough, some borked systems. I'd start with the various web pages on the subject and then see if you find one that is clear enough. You do have to know where to install the OS to some degree. I didn't find any problems when I installed a beta vista on xp in dual boot. (or at least I can't remember any) "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

I haven't really been a fan of hodge-podge partitioning. Maybe I was many years ago. But definitely, not since reasonably sized HDDs entered the scene. If I had those two HDDs, I would have left the 80GB by itself, while splitting the 320GB into no more than two, or max, three partitions. Leaving XP & its programs to occupy C:, as well as the boot record for the machine & load Vista on one of the partitions on the 320GB. As is, you are fine. Just go ahead & install Vista & point it to wherever partition, you won't lose the ability to boot XP after the dual boot installation is complete since XP pre-dates Vista. If it was the other way around, then you will have to rewrite the boot loader in order to boot Vista & XP. Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!