I have a PC with three OS's (Win98SE, W2K4, XP1) and am thinking about
installing Vista Home Premium. Of the concerns (there are numerous):

1) will Vista see the other OS's and courteously provide a multiboot
option?

2) If so, must I purchase a FULL version or will a less expensive
version work (e.g. UPGRADE version)?

TIA
Vic

i don't think an upgrade will work but if you install vista on another
partition then you should have the boot menue from vista showing all the
others usualy you can have 4 primary partitions on the first hard drive
i have tried with a boot menue if you look around you will find the
thread it looked good but i had to start from scratch again and with 3
os lot of work :)

http://tinyurl.com/ysgpfc


--
uncle_fred
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

The initial boot menu from Vista should show Vista and a legacy os
selection. The legacy selection will transfer to the current boot loading
process where you will select from your other 3 OS's
You will need the full version for a proper installation and also for a
legal one as you lose the license for the os you use as the qualifying os
for upgrade.

"none" <nospam@bogusaddress.com> wrote in message
news:%23zlwXYoBIHA.5980@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I have a PC with three OS's (Win98SE, W2K4, XP1) and am thinking about
> installing Vista Home Premium. Of the concerns (there are numerous):
>
> 1) will Vista see the other OS's and courteously provide a multiboot
> option?
>
> 2) If so, must I purchase a FULL version or will a less expensive
> version work (e.g. UPGRADE version)?
>
> TIA
> Vic
>
>

> 2) If so, must I purchase a FULL version or will a less expensive
> version work (e.g. UPGRADE version)?
>
Buy the OEM version online, unless you're sure that
you'll want a Full Version for years to come that can be
installed on later PCs. OEM ("orig. equip. manufacturer")
is the version that comes pre-installed on retail PCs.
It's basically a full version CD but without a full license.
Microsoft's position is that OEM versions are legal but are
tied to a single machine and tech. support is only provided
by the OEM. In this case the OEM is you. :)

I don't know about Vista prices, but OEM XP is
about $100, quite a bit cheaper than Full Version XP.

"none" <nospam@bogusaddress.com> wrote in message
news:%23zlwXYoBIHA.5980@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I have a PC with three OS's (Win98SE, W2K4, XP1) and am thinking about
> installing Vista Home Premium. Of the concerns (there are numerous):
>
> 1) will Vista see the other OS's and courteously provide a multiboot
> option?
>
> 2) If so, must I purchase a FULL version or will a less expensive
> version work (e.g. UPGRADE version)?
>
> TIA
> Vic

I agree with the other posts.
Vista is NOT courteous. It creates its restore points in a way that WXP
does not understand. On booting, WXP destroys these Vista restore points if
they exist on a drive that WXP sees. Vista's restore points can save a huge
amount of time and effort when things go wrong but there is little or no
information on how to verify that they have not been corrupted.

You didn't say how your multiboot system is set up. If you are using a boot
manager that gives you a choice of OS and hides the partitions of other OSs,
then Vista may fit in that system.

-Paul Randall