Old Programs and Vista/XP Dual Boot
 

Just a quick question I wanted to ask. If I choose to install Windows Vista to dual boot with Windows XP (with XP already installed first), will all of my XP programs that I have installed register as installed in the Vista OS?

For example, I have XP right now. Photoshop CS2 is installed on XP. If I install Windows Vista, will Photoshop CS2 be "installed" in Vista as well, or will I just have the files?

Obviously you'll just have the files.

Damn, then dual booting Vista is pointless.

Oh well, thanks for the reply.

Not quite. I've rearranged my hard drive so XP has a 30gb partition and Vista will get a 200gb partition because of application compatibility. Call of Duty 2 refuses to run for more than 3 seconds before freezing in Vista on a spare hard drive I tested in my main computer.. I couldn't ever reach the main menu. Since I'm planning to use Vista x64 as well, I had a PlayStation-to-Parallel port adapter lose all functionality thanks to the lack of any 64-bit driver for it.

Most people shouldn't have such critical (the parallel adapter in my case, I use it for StepMania/DDR) compatibility issues though, so a clean wipe of XP and install of Vista shouldn't be too bad.

It looks like you can actually "upgrade" to Windows Vista directly from Windows XP. And after this, your programs actually still work. If this is true, I might be tempted to try Vista, but I'm sure I probably couldn't go back nearly as easily.

You can, you just choose to "uninstall" Vista from the programs menu. Of course, this is theoretical, as that is how the Windows XP "Upgrade" would work.

I'd recommend you do a clean install, to make sure your programs and drivers actually do work, instead of having a bunch of clutter on your hard drive and in the registry or something that would slow down your computer. I'm currently loving Vista x64, although boot seems longer than XP and shutdown seems significantly longer..