Smallest Partition for Vista?


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Just a quick question. I'm installing XP, Vista, and Vista Server on a new hard drive. I created 5GB paritions for the 3 OSes and a main partition for data but when I tried to install Vista on the 5GB partition it said it was too small. What's the smallest needed?

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8 GB is the minimum for it to install, but giving the OS a small partition is always a bad idea (you need some breathing room since most apps install DLLs into the system32 directory and because Windows Update downloads updates into \SoftwareDistribution\Downloads under the OS folder).

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Mine is 7GB and has 1.5GB free with no apps installed. :)

kinda offtopic:

Is vista stable for you guys, at least somewhat? mine freezes randomly/regularly- but i think it's a problem with my graphics card and/or power supply..

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Okay I made a 5GB, 8GB, and 8GB. Plus the 60GB data partition. Starting the install of XP now. Also, I've already had Beta 1 running since launch and it was very stable. I didn't have any problems. It was great.

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Okay, everything is going well. But the Boot Manager is dumb, after I installed Vista, all the boot manager says is "Legacy (Pre-Longhorn" OS. Couldn't it say Windows XP? Anyway to change that? Should I use another boot manager?

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Mine is 6.5GB, with around 500MB free space with a few basic programs. I still store all my files and downloads on my main partition with a lot more free space. The boot loader is weird, I agree, but it seems to be layered on top of the XP boot loader, and thus can't be integrated.

BTW, mine is very stable. For casual use, I always use Vista instead of XP now. It looks a lot better, and although I somewhat dislike the new interface, it runs really smooth with nForce 6.14 drivers and the Vista ATI Video drivers.

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From what I recall, you can ditch the longhorn boot loader and just use the XP bootloader. There may be special boot options you won't have but it should work for booting.

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