Acer Dual Boot issue...

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Mhurkrothe

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Location
Nova Scotia, Canada
I have an ancient computer that I've been upgrading ever since my old good one blew up during a lightning storm. Anyway, I've reached the peak of what I can get for upgrades without needing to order via an online store like TigerDirect. It is an Acer Aspire T320 and my problem is this: I used to be able to play one of the only 3 MMORPGs I ever played extensively perfectly fine when I had nothing but the onboard Intel 82865G graphics. Now, however, it won't run with my new upgraded video card because according to the devs the game has issues with my cards chipset. So I'm trying to figure out how to dual boot using the Acer recovery disks I got with my system so I can have one partition with the Intel drivers and one with my new cards drivers. But the big problem(s) I'm having are the fact that I have no way to install any windows version other than with the recovery disks, I have no Windows 98 boot disk to fdisk a partition, I have no partition manager program, the recovery disks give me 2 options "Use existing partition Drive C:\" and "Create different partition" however, the second option doesn't actually let me create a second one it just rewrites the first one, and lastly Acer tech support can't help me because my warranty is expired (I could've told them that if they had bothered to mention the fact that I need a valid warranty to use email support too) and they redirected me to an "Answers by Acer" phone number that I'm not even going to bother with because it costs 59.99 for 30 minute intervals with a one year limit and I'll never use it after this anyway. So, if anybody with knowledge about my model specific question could give me a solution that can be done with my current situation (ex: not buying anything else nor downloading any pirated stuff either as that leads to a chronically viral infested computer and goes against my morales anyway)

If it matters I'll post my specs too, here they are:

Intel Celeron 2.79GHz processor
1024MB PC3200 400MHz DDR RAM
BFG GeForce 6200 256MB PCI video card (yes you heard right I'm stuck with crappy PCI, I don't even have a freaking AGP slot)
A-Open AW-840 PCI audio card
Diablotek 500W power supply
40GB IDE factory shipped hard drive (like I said it's an ancient computer so good luck finding a bigger one in my area)
My motherboard is....don't ask me it doesn't say in my manual nor does it have a sticker or any info on the physical motherboard itself.

Thanks in advance.
 
You wont be able to accomplish what you want. Not because of the dual boot thing but because your plan is flawed. You cant just install your old Intel Drivers and have them work with your new graphics card like it would before. It doesnt work that way.

You would need the proper drivers so that you could see something on screen. If you tried to install the Intel Drivers and they did not match the onboard video you would lose video. Then you couldnt see to play the game.

So you dont have much choice in the matter. There is no way you can just plug in your old drivers and have them work.
 
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. I was going to use the drivers that matched my onboard graphics

Service & Support

Go there Click "Driver Download" on the left then choose "Desktop" --> Aspire --> Aspire T320 --> VGA Driver

That is the one that is manufactured for my system. If you're talking about not using the correct video adapter on bootup I was going to switch from "PCI enabled video" to "Onboard video" in my BIOS everytime I wanted to play the game then just reboot and switch back when I wanted to use my GeForce instead.

That might not be possible but I'm not sure as I've done it before with two completely different video cards on one computer (one was an ATI Radeon HD4890 PCI-E2.0 the other was an Nvidia GeForce 9400GT AGP) the only difference with that situation was I used a windows 98 boot disk to fdisk a new partition but my floppy that had the boot disk on it no longer reads in my floppy drive.

So again, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I would be using the wrong driver.

I found a way to do it without the need of dual boot. I just rebooted, changed the graphics adapter to onboard via BIOS, saved turned off my system, plugged my monitor into the onboard VGA slot, rebooted, disabled my GeForce card in Device Manager, installed the Intel graphics driver, rebooted, and viola I'm now typing this through my Intel graphics and I didn't even need a dual boot.
 
one partition with the Intel drivers and one with my new cards drivers

Right there. That says it all.

My post previously was made cause i did not know that the video drivers you were going to install were the same ones that you previously used. As you said:

my old good one blew up during a lightning storm.

So i had assumed that this was a new system. I can not guess as to if they were the same Intel drivers that worked on both.

Your information was kinda confusing as you did not make any reference that you knew that you had to disable 1 device and enable the other or that your old system that worked was the same setup as your current system. I was going off the data you provided.
 
Ohhhh, I see how that could've been confusing. This "new" computer is in fact a different system but I see that I neglected to give detailed information on what exactly I was going to do in the first place. Anywho, I got it figured out. Didn't even need a dual boot.
 
Glad you got it all sorted in the end. That is all that matter right. ;)
 
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