Dual boot of XP and Vista question

[pro2a]

I had a question about dual booting. I dual booted XP and Vista on my PC. I was having some capability problems with Vista, but didn't wanna downgrade either, so I wiped it all and dual booted XP then Vista.

Computer specs are as follows:
1 TB Hard drive space. 2x drives @ 500GB EA. One hard drive is partitioned into 2 drives (XP on one Vista on the other), and the 3rd drive is empty. I have another 150Gig external for media.
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 2Gig Video Card.
Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 5000+ 2.61GHZ processors.
4 Gigs of DDR2 RAM (4 sticks of 1gig EA)
... and a bunch of other misc hardware.

My question is this... Is it possible to run some programs with Vista that were loaded in XP and vice versa? I've noticed some programs like Firefox, Winamp and Limewire will (I installed them running XP and they will open in Vista)... but programs that normally run fine in Vista that I loaded in XP won't cross over and run in Vista... like Day of Defeat or COD4 for example.

Will I have to install each of these programs on each OS if I want to run them in their respective OS? I know it sounds confusing, but how does this work?

Thanks for the help.

 

[KSoD]

No. the programs that were installed in XP can only be used in XP. The except to this is if the programs are portable applications which do not tie into the OS itself.

All programs that get installed tie into the OS via Registry Entries and App Data information. These files are very important to operation of the program and trying to execute the program without proper entries will cause the program to malfunction and possibly cause instability of the OS.

So yes it will require you to install the program in both OS's.

 

[pro2a]

I'm assuming programs like Firefox and Winamp are portable applications... or am I flirting with disaster running these in Vista even though I loaded them in XP?

 

[Lexluethar]

Firefox and winamp are installed in the OS unless they are explicitly portable applications. I have both applications on my machine and they are actually installed.

Vista will run both programs without issue (or i haven't had any issues).

 

[KSoD]

Some programs will work between systems. Firefox is not fully dependent on the OS as it is created this way. WinAmp is also. They are created so that they can operate as a stand alone program. almost like a portable applciation.

So running those wont cause issues. But trying to force things like games to run, will cause issues. As those are very OS depenedent.

 

[Hampton]

Some Games will run installed if they have been moded to do so..

you can install some games to a spare partition from one OS and if you have a "no cd" patch for that game it will work in your other OS's but each OS will change the settings, depending on Direct X version and such.