Very nice and very hard. Your problem is Vista. I know you love Vista but Vista was one of the worse operating systems excepting Windows Millenium. Don't use this solution for Windows 7.
For multibooting you can use many methodes including two hard disks with primary active partition and changing the booting order from BIOS but the different partition managers software solution (using the same disk and different partitions) is the best (of course the old operation system first).
Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 (working in Windows 2000 and XP), Virtual PC 2007 (i supose you use it) working in Vista and XP and the Windows XP Mode using Virtual PC for Windows 7.
I believe with Windows 7 and this new version your pointer will move and all this hard work will be unnecessary.
Of course you need 7 Professional or Ultimate but you can use XP Mode and enjoy most of the good software fealing inside of XP.
You can launch applications installed in virtual XP directly from the 7 desktop, you can access USB devices attached to your host (printers, scanners, flash memory, external disks), you can access your 7 folders and cut and paste between 7 and the virtual machine.
In short you are inside the host operating system and in the virtual at the same time and you can run applications from every one.
For multibooting you can use many methodes including two hard disks with primary active partition and changing the booting order from BIOS but the different partition managers software solution (using the same disk and different partitions) is the best (of course the old operation system first).
Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 (working in Windows 2000 and XP), Virtual PC 2007 (i supose you use it) working in Vista and XP and the Windows XP Mode using Virtual PC for Windows 7.
I believe with Windows 7 and this new version your pointer will move and all this hard work will be unnecessary.
Of course you need 7 Professional or Ultimate but you can use XP Mode and enjoy most of the good software fealing inside of XP.
You can launch applications installed in virtual XP directly from the 7 desktop, you can access USB devices attached to your host (printers, scanners, flash memory, external disks), you can access your 7 folders and cut and paste between 7 and the virtual machine.
In short you are inside the host operating system and in the virtual at the same time and you can run applications from every one.