installing office 12 beta vista

Does anyone know how (or even if it's possible) to run the setup procedure for Office 12 Beta on Vista when it's already installed on my Win XP installation.
I don't want to clog up my HD with two installs of the same software if I can avoid it (not just of Office, but lots of things). So does anyone know if I can (effectively) just put all the registry keys and such like into Vista, and leave the program files themselves on my XP drive?

Are you testing Vista in a multiboot environment on separate drives or partitions?
"Toby" wrote:

Does anyone know how (or even if it's possible) to run the setup procedure for Office 12 Beta on Vista when it's already installed on my Win XP installation.
I don't want to clog up my HD with two installs of the same software if I can avoid it (not just of Office, but lots of things). So does anyone know if I can (effectively) just put all the registry keys and such like into Vista, and leave the program files themselves on my XP drive?

I'm using separate drives, although the drive I have Vista on is partitioned, with Ubuntu Linux on the other partition.
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:

Are you testing Vista in a multiboot environment on separate drives or partitions?
"Toby" wrote:
Does anyone know how (or even if it's possible) to run the setup procedure for Office 12 Beta on Vista when it's already installed on my Win XP installation.
I don't want to clog up my HD with two installs of the same software if I can avoid it (not just of Office, but lots of things). So does anyone know if I can (effectively) just put all the registry keys and such like into Vista, and leave the program files themselves on my XP drive?

If you have Vista and XP on separate drives or partitions, and you did a clean install of Vista, the registry hive should be isolated and not related. As far as I know, any ways. Perhaps someone with greater registry knowledge can confirm this?
"Toby" wrote:

I'm using separate drives, although the drive I have Vista on is partitioned, with Ubuntu Linux on the other partition.
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:
Are you testing Vista in a multiboot environment on separate drives or partitions?
"Toby" wrote:
Does anyone know how (or even if it's possible) to run the setup procedure for Office 12 Beta on Vista when it's already installed on my Win XP installation.
I don't want to clog up my HD with two installs of the same software if I can avoid it (not just of Office, but lots of things). So does anyone know if I can (effectively) just put all the registry keys and such like into Vista, and leave the program files themselves on my XP drive?

It was certainly my understanding that they'd be separate, I'm just wondering if I can just install the registry entries, rather than have a duplicate set of program files as well - just have the Vista registry refer to my C: drive, where XP is installed.
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:

If you have Vista and XP on separate drives or partitions, and you did a clean install of Vista, the registry hive should be isolated and not related. As far as I know, any ways. Perhaps someone with greater registry knowledge can confirm this?

Toby--
I think you'll be fine, and won't have that duplicate set of files that concerns you and I understand your space concern. When you install on both XP and Vista, accept the default location for the install. Normally this would be the Programs file folder on the *drive/OS that you decide to install to first.* You have to choose one or the other. It would have been C:\Program Files for the common program folders and files to both Vista and XP's install but since I installed on Vista first, it is E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12. All of these are not in C:\Program Files because I installed on E:\ (Vista) first. Office always has,and always will, insist on putting a few files on the drive with a lone Windows even when you only have XP on the box and elect to put Office on another drive for space considerations.
Always be careful when installing Office on systems with limited free drive space because Office is going to want free space to extract and work with temporary files.Even if you have plenty of room for what Office will tell you is the real estate needed, you could have the setup balk if you don't have enough free space--the extra working space needed to install.
I have XP and Vista on a dual boot on this box. I installed Office 2007 on Vista and then installed it on XP running it from the same setup but while I was in each boot. All my Office 2007 files and folders are on the Vista Drive in E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office with the exception of a relatively few files that will always install on different parts of C:\ from Office--once you install Office from the XP drive. I suspect that is because I installed Office 2007 on my Vista boot *first* because I rarely go to the XP boot and can access the XP desktop from the Vista desktop.
The Registry keys for each respective install are located in the respective registries as Mark said.
I used to have Office 2003 and Office 2007 on both boots, parking Office 2007 in easily when it asked me if I wanted to save the old Office--the only caveat there being of course that if you want to use Outlook 2007 (and I did) you need to uninstall Outlook 2003 first because two Outlooks won't coexist on the same OS. I uninstalled Office 2003 on both XP and Vista because I decided to focus on Office 2007 after I was sure that what I'd be doing wasn't running into problems on Vista. There are of course, a number of reported bugs in Office 2007 on or off Vista but not in the everyday situations where I've been using Word, and Outlook as my two frequently used apps.
You can elect to keep files that will aid with the uninstall of Office always during the Office setup, and I would encourage you to do that because it will be more difficult to uninstall. Also when you uninstall Office, I would use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/
to make sure there are no damaged files that could get in the way of your unisntall or reinstall. Office leaves some reg entries and files when you uninstall to prepare for the next installation.
CH
"Toby" wrote in message

It was certainly my understanding that they'd be separate, I'm just wondering if I can just install the registry entries, rather than have a duplicate set of program files as well - just have the Vista registry refer to my C: drive, where XP is installed.
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:
If you have Vista and XP on separate drives or partitions, and you did a clean install of Vista, the registry hive should be isolated and not related. As far as I know, any ways. Perhaps someone with greater registry knowledge can confirm this?