Windows Dual Boot - Vista + XP help welcome :P

Well, as you may have guessed, i am going to attempt and dual boot Vista with XP,
i have Vista H.P. installed currently, and would like XP as a combatability mode essentially.

I have googled for a guide, and these:

http://www.syschat.com/dual-boot-vista-xp-vista-already-1946.html

http://computershopper.com/howto/dual-boot-your-pc-200712

Have caught my eye as decent guides, anywho, some questions for you...

1. can i access music and video stored on the vista partition? (i'll be installing all apps on the 50Gb xp partition)

2. is there a simple workaround for the problem of vista's backups being destroyed by XP, other than making a new one evertime i boot into vista?

3. is there anything i should take into consideration or do before it? (other than backup everything )

thanks in advance for the assistance (i hope )

 

1. Yes, you can
2. *Not sure*
3. The amount needed for the partions. Do you want one main partition for apps and music and stuff (For both XP and Vista) or do you want apps to be installed for XP or Vista only.

I got 40GB Vista partition, 10GB XP, and the rest (Like 450GiB) is my back up and software.

 

Since XP will only be used for software that doesn't work in vista, ala. my RA2 for some reason stopped liking vista, and a few more, it shall be seperate apps for each OS, i'll game on XP, and do all else on vista

 

hellooooo..?

 

Yes you can access files from the Vista partition when in XP, however you will not be able to access any files from C:\users\... (assuming vista is on C: ) as this is protected by Vista.

Store your files in a dfferent loaction like c:\music&video\ then your have no issues.

I found that RA2 would run in vista, however multiplayer would not work due to the fact that RA2 requires the IPX protocol to comunicate, which was removed from windows xp 64bit and later. I get round this by running RA2 inside a xp virtual machine (microsofts virtual pc). It runs surprisingly well.