Yes, I have and I can tell you it's very nice.  I get to enjoy the advantages of XP while trying out a new operating system on my second hard drive.

 

Having said that, let me warn you, you need a lot of time for this and there are some bumps along the way.  First, go into your BIOS and navigate to the drivers folder and then the subfolder Sata Operation and turn off "raid".  It must be reset to Auto Detect.  Make sure you enter the subfolder Sata Operation and make sure the selected item (auto detect) is selected (will be gray when selected) versus "Raid on".  Raid on seems to be the default from Dell for everyone, no mater whether your computer shipped with two drives or one.

 

Anyhow, I found out this BIOS setting change was the key to making the retail version of Vista install on my Dell.  Otherwise, it was always the IRQ error message and blue screen of death for me.

 

Once you get Vista installed on the second hard drive, its master boot record is going to overwrite the boot ini file on the XP drive.  What does this mean?  Well, basically, you can't get back into XP.  So long story made short, I booted to the disk (for XP) and installed a clean version of XP on my other hard drive.  At this point, everything got bettter.

 

Of course, then you have to reload all your programs, drivers, docs, etc and of course it is very time consuming.....especially with two drives.  I was worn out with it but glad its done now. If you want less hassles (but don't want to erase XP on your hard drive), you could always consider the option of removing the XP drove .

 

Just remember.....Sata hard drive(s) plus Raid setting plus retail version of MS Vista install equals bad outcome!

 

P.S.  Backup, backup, backup! (first that is)

 

Vista will have the drivers for most SATA drives.

Why would you not have the option to dual boot?

sounds like a good plan for trying out vista until more drivers are available - one question though

 

will there be an option to choose the OS as the system boots or do you need to go into bios and change the boot order?

There's alwasy an option choose and the default time is 30 seconds.  You can however, chnage the order of boot and run the timer down to 1 second.

jmwills wrote:

I have a new D520 that has raid turned on by default.  I was reading your post and I decided to turn raid off since I don't intend to use it.  When i rebooted I got the blue screen of death.  I turned it back on any booted fine.  If this is going to be a problem when I install Vista I wonder if the Dell assist disk and instructions will provide a solution to this isssue.  Any ideas?

Sorry to hear you got the blue screen of death when you turned off raid in your BIOS.  I am no expert on these BIOS systems but I have to wonder if yours is configured differently than the BIOS on the Dell XPS 410.  In my BIOS, the choice is either "raid on" or "raid auto detect".  It was only when the setting was put on "raid auto detect" in my machine (XPS 410) that Vista would install.

 

To answer your question about the Dell OEM version of Vista, a tech rep I spoke to at Dell informed me that he thought the OEM version would have all the necessary drivers unique to each Dell system.  It is to be hoped that his statement will be true.  If you qualified for the express upgrade, you should get your Vista DVD in 4 to 8 weeks and Dell has stated that additional drivers will be included.  Hopefully so!

 

My experience was with the retail full version of Vista Home Premium.  We all know that Microsoft cannot put every conceivable driver on their DVD.  However, this was a critical issue that had me stumped for days.  Good luck with your install. 

 

P.S. You may want to check with Dell and find out why it is necessary to leave raid on in your machine.  Afterall, if you were dual booting with two operating systems, there is no way it would work with" raid on"  (that I am aware of).

Do be very careful about knowing what you are turning on or off in the BIOS.  For example, in the XPS 410 BIOS, you have to navigate to the Drives folder and "then" the "Sata Operation" subfolder.  It is in this subfolder that you will see the option of leaving "raid on" or putting it in "autodetect mode". 

 

If, by chance, you clicked on one of the other Sata subfolders within Drives and turned it off, you might have temporarily turned off your hard drive!  That would have surely caused a blue screen of death.

 

Fyi.....Dell says they "recommend" that users leave the setting in the "Sata Operation" subfolder to "raid on" for the best performance and to avoid any problems (even when you don't use raid or have it configured).  However, it is this very issue of leaving "raid on" in the "Sata Operation" subfolder that prevented the retail version of Vista Home Premium from loading on my system. 

 

During my intial attempts to install Vista, no one at Dell had any solutions for me.  Heck, even Microsoft could not help.  Of course, that should be no surprise given some of the people that answer those phones.  It took my diligence, patience, and finally consulting with a local technician to figure all this out.

 

Again, hopefully Dell will have their act together and will include the appropriate drivers on their OEM version so you don't even have to worry about raid in the BIOS.  However, my intent here is to raise this issue so that others - particularly those who bought a retail copy - like myself might benefit in some way.

 

Good luck with the install.  Fyi....the tool from microsoft which scans your XP system for potential conflicts is an excellent tool to start off with.  Obviously, you want to ensure you've backed up everything.

Thanks for your reply.  My machine is the same as yours, either on or autodetect.  I got the blue screen when I set it to autodetect.  I will research this a bit later, I have an external hard drive plugged into a USB outlet which might have something to do with what happened.  I will disconnect it and see if anything changes.  I will get the "express upgrade" so I am hoping that it will include the necessary drivers and instructions from my maching. 

 

I really don't have a problem, I just changed the settings back to raid on and things are fine.  I hope I figure out how to turn raid off successfully prior to installing Vista.