Dual Booting XP & Vista, problems installing software

[pctech]

I got what I think is an interesting predicament that I'm hoping some compuer savy person here might know the answer to.

I am trying to dual boot a computer with XP and Vista. The reason is because my may need to have this done to his computer at college (Purdue U) in order to utilize their network more efficiently. I know, I know, Vista and efficiency don't normally go in the same paragraph. No need to beat me up over that.

Blame Purdue for making things difficult. The whole reason for installing Vista on his machine is because for some reason his XP won't see Vista machines sharing the same router and workgroup and visa versa. Go figure, it works here at my home just fine.

The problem I'm having is this: when I installed Vista, which is on the D Drive, and starting installing other programs like Photoshop, Java, etc, they were defaulting to the C Drive, which is where my XP is. I didn't pick up on it until I started watching things more closely. Needless to say my XP got all messed up.

Usually when I dual booted XP and 2000 in the past I never had this problem, the programs defaulted to the correct drive when they installed. Vista won't do that for some reason. I'm thinking it has something to do with the bootloader that Vista employs which is not the same bootloader that XP or 2000 uses but I don't know for sure.

Has anyone else encountered this problem and is there a way to fix that so it won't happen?

I have to leave but I'll check back in the morning to see if anyone has any nuggets of wisdom (other than chucking Vista out the window) to share with me.

Thanks, and go McCain-Palin!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JerseyHighlander]

The microsoft XP SP3 pack and the other patch I posted in my first response install the VISTA networking stack into the XP OS. AFter that your son might, or might not need to contact the Uni IT dept and have them install his MAC address into the Vista Server workgroups he’s a member of.

His XP booted machine will show up as a Vista network compliant machine on the Vista Server Admin’s screen once the patch is installed. It might not automatically be allowed group permissions that his user account has permission to though. MS promises to fix that in the next patch.

[The South Texan]

Buy an Apple, dude.

[Yossarian]

Do any intel-based motherboards other than Macs use EFI rather than BIOS?

On my MacBookPro, I run a bootloader called "rEFIt" that works beautifully. It isn't a Mac piece of software, it loads before any OS gets running. Through this, I can choose to boot into OS X 10.5, Vista (blech), or Ubuntu 8.04 partitions on my drive.

It seems much easier to use than GRUB (which I run at work) or LILO (outdated, I think). But it requires an EFI motherboard, which is what Apple, and ... anyone else ????

[PAR35]

Why in the world Microsoft decided to change the bootloader with Vista I have no idea.

Probably the same reason they released a patch that blocked internet connectivity for those of us using a reliable third party firewall.

[pctech]

I actually think I might have found the problem. Vista, by default, turns off all file sharing access and requires passwords for anyone running XP or earlier.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

My son hasn't tried it yet but I want his roommates to look into this before I try and do anything with his computer. If this works then hopefully I won't have to make any more changes other than the one I already did, which was to install the LLTD protocol.