Running dual operating systems on my laptop??

coolbeans

Further to yesterday's question re installing XP on my Vista equipped Fujitsu I am now wondering if it's OK to run two operating systems on my 4G, 320GB HD machine. Chap I was talking to today said that he has done this very thing as he can't get a particularly specialised piece of software to run on crappy Vista. Thoughts please? I want to run this software too but can only do so on XP.

Thanks in advance,
CB.

msg11

From the sounds of it I couldn't see there been a problem.

I have not done a XP installation onto a Vista Partitioned HD, or Vista onto an XP Partitioned HD, so I could not tell you if it will over write some of the files.

But the RAM and HD space is more than enough for XP to run smoothly.

Just don't forget to partition correctly and don't overwrite any of the vista files.

petes

Yes you can but be wary. Make sure that all the XP drivers are availble for your laptop.

I had problems in the past with HP/Compaq laptops that came pre installed with Vista. Couldn't find some of the drivers for XP anywhere.


Have you any experience with dual booting?

coolbeans

Insurgent wrote: »

Yes you can but be wary. Make sure that all the XP drivers are availble for your laptop.

I had problems in the past with HP/Compaq laptops that came pre installed with Vista. Couldn't find some of the drivers for XP anywhere.


Have you any experience with dual booting?

No, unfortunately I do not. It's a move I'd be fairly hesitant to make to be honest and am currently weighing up its merits. I think I can find all the necessary drivers. It's a Fujitsu Pi3540.
Am also considering trying to find a relatively cheap desktop so that I can possibly avoid all the heartache and hairloss dual booting has the prospect of causing me.

Capt'n Midnight

you would need an additional XP license to do this
and it can't be an OEM license , nor can it be an upgrade from an OEM copy
and you have to move it from the original machine , you can't use it twice.


check more about compatibility mode, though if you are using a device that needs hardware drivers then check the vendors website and if there aren't any complain to them

after installing Xp you would need to repair vista to sort out booting.



If you have a vista BUSINESS license then you can REPLACE vista with XP (it's called downgrade)

Kinetic^

It's feasible and not that difficult to setup. I had XP, Vista, Win7 and Ubuntu on my machine not so long ago.

You need to install XP first, well you don't need to but it's easier. When you come to choosing a partition, select the current install and delete it and any other parititions currently there (excluding your backup partition which can come on laptops). I'd partition the XP part to 10GB and then install it.

Once you've installed XP now you want to move on to installing vista. Insert the DVD and go through the install process until you come to partition manager. You should see your XP install there as well as a free area of the hard drive. You want to create a new partition and with Vista I'd probably put it to 20GB as it takes up more space. Then install Vista.

This should leave you with 290gb over for general space for files. To put this in to use, boot in to Vista. Right click my computer and select manage. Then go to disk management. You should see both your xp and Vista partitions there with an unallocated part of the hard drive after these. You want to format this unused partition to NTFS so both OS will see the partition and you will be able to have files greater then 4gb on it (ie HD movies).

If you plan on gaming on either then I would increase the size of the parition belonging to the OS you plan to game on as the install will use a lot of the free space.

If you plan on installing linux afterwards then I'd probably format the large unallocated space to FAT32. While you won't have files greater then 4GB you will be able to access your files from Xp, Vista & Linux. It will be just a matter of having programs that can access those files on all 3 OS. I have my netbook setup with XP and an Ubuntu distro and have the remainder of the HD formatted with FAT32 and it works very well for stuff like media/documents. There's probably a more exact guide out there but if you're capable of installing XP yourself then you should be fine.

When you've got the both installed, Vista will become the highlighted default OS in the boot menu. So if you just power it on and leave the laptop for a few minutes it will boot in to the Vista logon screen. You'll have to scroll down to XP if you want to select that. The exact size of the OS partition could probably be reviewed as I can't remember off hand how much each OS takes up.

Edit: as Capt'n Midnight stated, they need to be full licenses and not just upgrade licenses.

monkeypants

Yes, it can be done. My initial thoughts on it are:

Use PartionMagic or something similar to shrink the size of the Vista partition. This will allow you to create a new partition for XP. I think there's an open source alternative called Gparted or something like that.

Make sure that you have SATA drivers ready for the XP install if you have SATA drives. XP doesn't install them automatically. Oh, and have whatever network drivers you can (wired or wireless). Then you can go online and download anything that you forget.

After installation, you'll have a boot menu, but it will be very basic. It'll give the options as 1) Vista and 2) Other Windows or something like that. EasyBCD will allow you to rename the options and change the order they appear in. Just makes things tidier.

coolbeans

Thanks guys, very helpful and informative.