OS Not Compatible

[JayOwl]

Right, so a couple of days ago I bought Battlefield 3 off ebay, and I got quite a good deal on it- I now have it on origin. Unfortunely I still have XP, and although my computer is capable in every other way, the game's been made so that XP does not support it. Only Vista or Window's 7 would work.

Anyway, I've got a vista disk (that I thought I'd never use), and I was wondering how easy it would be to duel-boot my pc. (I'd keep XP because Vista's shit; I'd only use vista for games really.)

Would I need another hard disk, or could I still create a duel on the same one if I cleared it a bit (226GB), and would I have much of a risk of losing the data on my hard drive? I've got as long as I want- I 'own' the game now, I just can't play it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[FordSVT]

If you create a dual boot and you only have one volume, you may lose data when you set up your partitions. You really should back up anything that is important to you just in case.

I also disagree with you that Vista is "shit". At this point, it's a very good OS. W7 is better, but Vista works just fine as long as your computer isn't a decade old.

 

[Saturn0660]

No, he's right.. Vista is shit..

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I'd recommend resizing your primary Windows partition from within Windows, then let the Vista installer use that space to set up its own partition.

You should be able to do this by going to Control Panel -> Adminsitrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. Right-click the partition you want to resize, and pick "Shrink Volume". For best results, you'd probably want to do a full defragment first.

If you want even better results, I recommend using GPartEd from a live CD. That will let you shrink the partition as small as possible.

I recommend backing up anything you can't replace before you attempt any of this. Messing with partitions is always risky business, and you can easily lose everything if something goes wrong or you make a mistake.

 

[JayOwl]

Ok, thanks for the help everyone! When I next get a chance I'll come back to this at some point and use some of the info. I will definitely be backing important things up before I try anything... When I do it (at some point in the next month hopefully), I'll post it in here.

 

[JayOwl]

Sorry for this zombie, but I've now got Vista! XP crashed so I installed over it after extracting backups, and it worked.
Battlefield 3 time finally!

Mods, you can close this thread if you want to- I don't mind either way.