dual boot

[daveh0]

I am configuring my g/f's mother's new laptop. It came with Vista installed. She currently is using XP and is willing to give Vista a shot but not sure how much patience she'll have to learn it (or deal with its current shortcomings). She's got plenty of HD space so I was thinking of installing XP on a separate partition and letting her switch back and forth if she wanted.

My question is this: if I create a partition for Vista, a partition for XP and a partition for data (i.e. her "stuff"), will both versions of Windows be able to access the data partition?

I know that all the software and services and drivers will have to be installed twice but if I could keep the data in 1 central location, I think it might be worth it.

[Neo]

Yes, both the XP and Vista installations will be able to access the data partition.

[Patonb]

Yes. You can... However, if it came with Vista, there will not be short comings.

Honestly, I've not had any Vista issues, and really that "annoying" ask to preceed notification isn't even annoying. I'm running Ultimate, but in A VMWare setting.

What you really should do is the 3 partitions right now... Say do 20% or 20 Gig for the Vista, leave another 20% empty, NTFS, and 60% for the Data. Then, If she is having issues put XP on the 20%.

Honestly, it'll be easy to not learn Vista, which really is better, if it's dual booted. But you're setup if she starts throwin a fit.