Dual boot with WinXP

I am using Vista Home Premium. I understand that this Vista does not allow
dual boot. I am considering upgrate to Ultimat. I have two questions:
1. When I upgrade, sould I jut pop-in the cd/dvd and let the Ultimat do the
upgrade or should I wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install?
2. I also downloaded the Virtual PC. Should I use the program to install XP
or just directly install it in Ultimat?
Thanks.

twinriver1 wrote:

> I am using Vista Home Premium. I understand that this Vista does not allow
> dual boot. I am considering upgrate to Ultimat. I have two questions:
> 1. When I upgrade, sould I jut pop-in the cd/dvd and let the Ultimat do
> the upgrade or should I wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install?
> 2. I also downloaded the Virtual PC. Should I use the program to install
> XP or just directly install it in Ultimat?
> Thanks.

It is incorrect that "Vista does not allow dual boot". You can dual-boot
Vista and another operating system. However, there are issues with XP
wiping out Vista's System Restore points if you don't use a third-party
boot loader and hide the operating systems from each other. It is also
trickier to install XP after Vista is already installed. I'll give you
links for all these things.

Whether you use virtual computing or a dual-boot depends on what you want to
do in the guest operating system (in your case, XP). If you only need to
run 2D programs in XP, virtual computing is most convenient. If you want to
run 3D games in XP, then a virtual machine will not work for you. An
advantage of using Virtual PC (or VMware which I prefer but it isn't free)
is that the hardware is virtual so drivers aren't an issue.

Dual Booting Windows Vista & Windows XP -
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Install Windows XP On A Machine Already Running Windows Vista (MVP John
Barnett) -
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm

VMware - http://www.vmware.com

Questions about Microsoft's Virtual PC can be asked in its newsgroup:
microsoft.public.virtualpc

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

You need separate licenses for XP and Vista, so if you have used upgrade
versions you no longer have an active XP license.
You cannot install XP directly in Vista. You can dual boot or use Virtual
PC

"twinriver1" <> wrote in message
news943F5A6-5629-4ABF-8DC1-...
>I am using Vista Home Premium. I understand that this Vista does not allow
> dual boot. I am considering upgrate to Ultimat. I have two questions:
> 1. When I upgrade, sould I jut pop-in the cd/dvd and let the Ultimat do
> the
> upgrade or should I wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install?
> 2. I also downloaded the Virtual PC. Should I use the program to install
> XP
> or just directly install it in Ultimat?
> Thanks.

Malke wrote:

> twinriver1 wrote:
>
>> I am using Vista Home Premium. I understand that this Vista does not
>> allow dual boot. I am considering upgrate to Ultimat. I have two
>> questions: 1. When I upgrade, sould I jut pop-in the cd/dvd and let the
>> Ultimat do the upgrade or should I wipe out the hard drive and do a clean
>> install? 2. I also downloaded the Virtual PC. Should I use the program to
>> install XP or just directly install it in Ultimat?
>> Thanks.
>
> It is incorrect that "Vista does not allow dual boot". You can dual-boot
> Vista and another operating system. However, there are issues with XP
> wiping out Vista's System Restore points if you don't use a third-party
> boot loader and hide the operating systems from each other. It is also
> trickier to install XP after Vista is already installed. I'll give you
> links for all these things.
>
> Whether you use virtual computing or a dual-boot depends on what you want
> to do in the guest operating system (in your case, XP). If you only need
> to run 2D programs in XP, virtual computing is most convenient. If you
> want to run 3D games in XP, then a virtual machine will not work for you.
> An advantage of using Virtual PC (or VMware which I prefer but it isn't
> free) is that the hardware is virtual so drivers aren't an issue.
>
VMWare Server is free.

Cheers.

> Malke

--
The three Rs of Microsoft support: Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.

Proprietary Software: a 20th Century software business model.

Q: What OS is built for lusers?
A: Which one requires running lusermgr.msc to create them?

Contact AlexB to find out how to "delouse" your Vista system.

twinriver1 wrote:
> I am using Vista Home Premium. I understand that this Vista does not allow
> dual boot.


That's utter nonsense.

The older OS should be installed first; otherwise, you'll have
trouble creating a dual-boot scenario without using 3rd-party products.

However, dual-booting is no longer necessary in most situations.

Why not download a Virtual Machine application, such as Microsoft's
VirtualPC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp?) or
Innotek's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) and run WinXP and your
legacy applications within a virtual computer. Both are free and work
with Vista. (Microsoft does not support the use of VirtualPC 2007 on
Vista Home editions, but several people have reported that it works just
fine.)


> I am considering upgrate to Ultimat.


Your choice, but you might want to think about having a real reason for
doing do before you incur an unnecessary expense.


I have two questions:
> 1. When I upgrade, sould I jut pop-in the cd/dvd and let the Ultimat do the
> upgrade or should I wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install?


The in-place upgrade would be the simplest and quickest method.


> 2. I also downloaded the Virtual PC. Should I use the program to install XP
> or just directly install it in Ultimat?

That makes no sense. While VirtualPC can be installed in Vista, WinXP
certainly cannot.




--

Bruce Chambers

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