Here is my plan...
I soon will have a 500 gig SATA 2 drive and existing 2-40 gig IDE's
System is a Dell 400sc Server, 4 gig of ram
I plan to partition the 500 gig into 2- 250gig's and I want to put Vista Upgrade clean install on one partition and XP on the other.
on the one 40 gig I plan to put Ubuntu on the other maybe Linux server just for kicks.
I am looking for tips on doing this type of install?
First some tips on the best way to partition the new 500 gig Maxtor and anything else your experience may help me complete this task.
I'm sure I would do just fine on my own but I wanted to see if anyone has a vast experience in this and may possibly have a better way then I would go about it.
Thanks for you time and effort in advance.
I just found this post elsewhere and its some great info about the upgrade clean install...
As many of you are now finding out, in order to upgrade your copy of XP to Vista, you need to have XP currently installed on the computer and the setup program must be run from withing XP. No longer can you boot off of the setup DVD and just insert the media of older versions that you are upgrading from. What this means is that there is no true way of doing a clean install from a formatted hard drive as when you enter the Vista product key it will tell you the setup must be run from within the previous operating system. Another issue that occurs is that you will invalidate the XP product key that you are upgrading from.
Paul Thurott has discovered from internal Microsoft documents another method that you can use to perform a full install. To do this follow the steps below:
1. Boot your computer form the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD. When you get to the setup screen, start a new setup of Vista.
2. When prompted to enter your product key, Do not enter it. Instead click on the Next button and continue with the setup. This will install Vista as a 30-day trial.
3. When prompted select the edition of Vista which you had purchased. So if you purchase Home Premium, select Home Premium. This is important, so do not pick a version that you did not purchase as it will affect later steps.
4. Once the setup has completed and you are back at your new Vista desktop, run the setup program from the Vista DVD again from within the new Vista 30-day trial.
5. Go through the setup, but this time when it asks for your product key, enter in the product key that came with your upgrade.
6. When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or a Custom (advanced) install, choose the Custom (advanced) option to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, you are performing a second installation of Vista.
7. Once setup has completed for the second time you will be able to activate Windows Vista as normal. You are now left with a fresh clean install of Vista and your original Vista install has been renamed C:\Windows.old. You can now delete the Windows.old folder as it is not necessary to be on your computer.
Why does this work? It works because Microsoft let the Vista 30-day trial act as a valid upgrade path for Vista and because you can install the trial to a empty drive. This keeps the process as clean as possible for those who do not own a Full install version of Vista.
Now all I need to do is get past the partition limitation...I'm hoping Vista will do it without any problems..[/font] I hope this Bios is worthy of 250 gig partitions.
