Dual Boot question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alex
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A

Alex

Hi I have a new laptop with Vista Business on it, and need to also have XP
on the samw machine.
Are there any special steps

i have acronis disk manager suite 10 i have created a new partion and
formatted it. Do i just install XP onto this partition. if so will the
computer offer me the option to boot up on either partition when the
computer is switched on?

Cheers

Al;ex
 
Alex said:
Hi I have a new laptop with Vista Business on it, and need to also have XP
on the samw machine.
Click to expand...

Hi Alex,

Depending on your requirements, you might consider using Microsoft's Virtual
PC as an alternative to dual boooting.

Virtual PC is a free download, from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

The beauty of Virtual PC is that you can have the XP machine running in a
window, right on your Vista desktop; so you can alt-tab from Vista to XP
applications; cut-n-paste between them, share files in real time, etc. It is
much more convenient than need ing to shut down Vista, boot XP; then shut
dowen XP, boot Vista, etc etc. Also, dual-booting is quite error prone. Once
you get it working right, it's pretty stable. But these forums are littered
with the corpses of machines where dual-booting went wrong.

What's the downside? Well, not every application is a good candidate for
running in a Virtual PC. The virtual PC machine has a fairly modest video
card, so not suitable for 3D graphics, games etc. But typical office apps
run fine. Also your PC will need enough resources - CPU, memory, disk IO -
to run two operating systems, Vista and XP, at the same time (1GB RAM is
okay but 2GB definitely preferred for running a VM).

To configure dual booting, it is definitely easier to start with the older
OS (XP) on there first and then install Vista afterwards. There are some
tricks and hacks to splice XP onto an existing Vista system; some other
folks in the forum can probably give you pointers. But - if you take the
dual boot path - I recommend you back up your existing user data (if any);
then wipe the system; then create 2 partitions; and install XP in the first
partition; then install Vista from scratch in the second partition. This is
a lot easier if you got Vista Installation media with your laptop; if Vista
was pre-installed and you didn't get a DVD, it starts to get harder.

Note that you cannot have XP and Vista in the same partition - it's a recipe
for disaster, if it works at all.

Hope this helps,
 
Booting into XP will delete your Shadow copies and restore points in the
Vista system.

If you want to install XP second, make that partition the 'active' partition
on your drive. It must be a primary partition. Install XP to this active
partition. Boot into XP (your only choice) then in disk management, change
the active partition to the Vista partition. Reboot into Vista. Download
and install EasyBCD or VistaBootPro. Add a legacy system to the boot
process pointing to the XP partition. If you have problems booting into XP,
you may need to copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini to the Vista drive.
 
Andrew

thank you for your post -

The only reason that I need the XP partition is that we have sequenced
versions of Office (these were sequenced using Softgrid ijn an XP
environment) and i need to have access to these.

Do you think that these would work in an Virtual PC?

Alex
 
Alex said:
The only reason that I need the XP partition is that we have sequenced
versions of Office (these were sequenced using Softgrid ijn an XP
environment) and i need to have access to these.
Click to expand...

Hi Alex,

Yes, Office is an excellent candidate to run in a Virtual PC VM. This is one
of the core scenarios for which Virtual PC was designed.

It sounds like the only issue is whether your machine up to it. Virtual PC
is not hugely resource intensive; but you are running two OSes, side by
side. As a guide, I can comfortably run Vista plus one, two or even tthree
concurrent VMs on my laptop, which is a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of RAM.
Anyway, Virtual PC is a free download; so it won't hurt to try it out.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers,
 
Alex said:
Hi I have a new laptop with Vista Business on it, and need to also have XP
on the samw machine.
Are there any special steps

i have acronis disk manager suite 10 i have created a new partion and
formatted it. Do i just install XP onto this partition. if so will the
computer offer me the option to boot up on either partition when the
computer is switched on?

Cheers

Al;ex
Click to expand...
 
Alex,

I just installed XP pro into Virtual PC 2007 to run SAS. My host OS is Vista.

After you install Virtual PC on Vista then go to the file menu and select to
install the Additions component. They are part of the download. Then install
XP into the Virtual disk partition you create when Virtual PC is installed.
Only need about 20 Gbytes for the virtual disk. Then install your programs
into XP. Select Network sharing as the network option.

From the Virtual PC program, select the system and XP will automatically
begin to boot. And, it is the right side Alt key-Enter key that has to be
pressed to run full screen.

2 Gbyte of RAM is a good idea.

Arne
 
Hi Andrew


Thank you so much for your help.
I now have a virtual PC on my Vista laptop, running XP and loaded with
sequenced versions of Office 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 - all all work.

brilliant, exactly what I wanted.

Thanks
 
Alex said:
I now have a virtual PC on my Vista laptop, running XP and loaded with
sequenced versions of Office 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 - all all work.
Click to expand...


Outstanding! Thanks for the feedback. Good luck with the new VMs!

Cheers
Andrew
 
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