Installing two Operating Systems

gps

gps

gps

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Can anyone out there give me some guidance on the possibilities and practical limitations of installing XP32 onto my system even though I have Vista 64 already installed as the primary OS. I presume I will need a seperate disk/partition. Might seem odd, but I am wanting to get some of my old games that aren't Vista 64 compatible running on my new machine.
Also I was wondering what actually makes the older games incompatible? Is it the fact that my new OS is 64 bit or is it that Vista is completely different from XP (or both). That last question may well demonstrate what an amateur I am, so your patiuence is appreciated.
Thanks in advance
 
an easy route, 1 which you may or may not want to follow would be to go down the virtual machine route.
using a virtual machine program (a lot of people on this forum like virtualbox, MS do 1 too), you can install another os inside your main OS, an easier option then setting up partitions and ect ect.
 
As above, or you'd need a separate primary partition on your Harddrive or if you decide to a separate harddrive to install XP on.
Have you tried installing your games and running them in XP compatibility mode ?
 
I haven't even tried the XP compatibility mode for games - I think I tried it once for something else (can't remember what) and it didn't work, so haven't tried since. Will try again on the games.
Never heard of a virual machine program. I'll look into this aswell.
Thanks guys.
 
Pleasure...I got the original Ghost Recon running on my Windows 7 Beta installation using the compatibility mode. So hopefully, you might get away with it.
 
How are you finding Windows 7? I'm in no massive rush to upgrade from Vista at the moment as I don't seem to be overstretching my system at the moment and its running well for gaming. I'm sure it'll be a different case in a year or so when the next generation games start to stretch it.
 
Not really had much time to really stress Windows 7. However, it installed within 30 mins with my Socket 939 4400+ and 1 Gig of ram. It boots up and runs cleanly, and only found 1 App so far which is not compatible. It seems quite nippy even with just 1 Gig compared to my XP install.
Afraid I can't compare to Vista (because I'm on XP at the mo), but I think I'll be taking the leap to Windows 7 when it goes on sale.
 
Might as well ask this question in here as you guys are unabout virtual boxes.
Is there any performance hit when running a Operating system inside a virtual box ??
 
Roeg1 said:
Might as well ask this question in here as you guys are unabout virtual boxes.
Is there any performance hit when running a Operating system inside a virtual box ??
Click to expand...

Yes, roughly about half the power of your main system is the general rule (depending on the Virtual Box software used).

I'd dual boot if I were you.
 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185

No restore points if you dual boot but that technet article above gives you 2 workarounds. You may find that if you ever need to use the Vista from DVD repair options the cupboard is bare and you need to reinstall unless you implement the workaround otherwise it cannot find the Vista partition.

Also, way to do this is install your earliest OS first on the primary boot drive (usually C: ). Then install the next newest and so on but they can go on other drive letters its only the XP boot loader & XP OS needs to go onto the C: drive.
 
Gunnar said:
Not really had much time to really stress Windows 7
Afraid I can't compare to Vista (because I'm on XP at the mo), but I think I'll be taking the leap to Windows 7 when it goes on sale.
Click to expand...

Good choice.
 
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