Dual Boot Vista N XpiDual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps. Windows 7 has proved to be quite the drastic improvement over Vista, enough that it even has XP stragglers crawling out of the woodwork to check it out. Your chance to test drive the release candidate is now running thin, in fact, if you haven’t tried the new OS until now you are better off postponing your plans for a week and installing the real thing. The final version of Windows 7 has already been sent to partners and is scheduled to debut publicly later this week on October 2. Thankfully, setting up a dual boot configuration is both easy and practical. If you’re looking for a quick and dirty, yet thorough how- to on getting Windows 7 to run alongside your installation of XP or Vista, read on. How to Dual Boot Linux on Your PC. Linux is often best installed in a dual-boot system. This allows you to run Linux on your actual hardware. The Desktop Files Dual Booting with Windows XP and Windows. There are two ways to put down the Windows Vista boot sector—the piece of boot code that tells the.
Dual Boot Vista N XpsWe’re going to assume that you either already have a Windows 7 DVD, or have an ISO file. If the former is true, feel free to skip ahead to Step 2. Our personal favorite is Img. Burn, but to name some others: Burn. Free CD and DVD, CDBurner. XP and Ashampoo Burning Studio Free. Even though this guide is absolutely harmless, random software anomalies can and do occur – do yourself a favor and backup your precious data before proceeding. Most of you who are reading this will probably only have one existing partition, dedicated to the operating system you’re currently using. While Windows Vista has built- in utilities to resize active partitions, XP does not, and thus we must resort to using a third party application (GParted). You can also use a third- party tool called GParted, which we are recommending to Windows XP users (see below). You can skip to the XP section and follow the exact same directions if you prefer the GParted route for any reason. A window titled “Disk Management” should open displaying basic information about the drives attached to your PC. The recommended minimum partition size for Windows 7 is 1. GB, so enter a figure of that size or larger and then hit “Shrink”. With that, you can move on to Step 3. Running Multiple Operating Systems: Dual Booting, Partitions & File Systems. Virtual Environments . You should understand the risks of using such operating systems online. Why Multiple OSs? There are many reasons for running either a dual- boot or multi- OS computer: You can reduce the space dedicated to hardware in your working environment. Gamers don't want to endanger their business installation. Web designers want to view their sites in various OSs using native browsers. IT staff may need to be able to work with several versions of Windows. Windows users want to experiment with Linux, but need to retain Windows. Drivers for legacy hardware are unavailable (e. This page discusses options for doing that. Terminology. I'm going to use the following terms: Dual boot: running more than a single version of the same operating system (i. Windows 7 and Windows 8)Multi- OS: running more than a single operating system (OS) on a computer (i. Windows 7 and Linux). Return to top. Virtual Environments. Before you attempt to install a dual- or multi- boot environment, you might want to try out one of the software solutions that run alternative software in a separate “virtual environments.”Hardware has improved to where it is now possible to share resources with another separate OS running “virtually” on top of your current OS. There are several options to run Windows programs on other operating systems and vice versa. Be sure you don't opt for a solution that is too complex or expensive and that your computer can meet the performance requirements. Virtual Environment Software. Windows. Mac. Parallels allows Mac users to run Windows applications. Linux. WINE allows users to run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X. Tutorials & Reviews. Return to top. Dual Boot. Dual booting has the advantage that you're running both OSs natively (i. Boot Camp creates a suitable partition for the Windows installation and the necessary Windows drivers for the installation. Have a look at this guide to see the process: To remove Windows from your Mac you need only remove Boot Camp. Everything is pretty much automatic. However, if you wish to restore or repair a Boot Camp partition, you might need more help. Using Boot Camp without an Optical Drive. One of the “gotchas” when installing Windows using Boot Camp is if you replace your Mac's optical drive with a second hard drive is that the system may not recognize an external drive. I recommend creating an ISO image from a Windows installation DVD rather than trying to make an external optical drive work. The solution that worked for me was a post by Laas, Installing Windows 7 on Mac. Book Pro without Super. Drive particularly using the comments by Jorge. It required the use of the r. EFInd Boot Manager and took some experimentation to get it to work. I didn't attempt the hacks to the info. Jorge's instructions were for Windows 8. I've modified the instructions to install Windows 7 Pro using r. EFInd (a fork of r. EFIt) on OS X Maverick and to make them clearer: Install r. EFInd then restart your Mac. Let OS X load one time (to be certain that r. EFInd loads). Reboot again. You should see r. EFInd (if you don't, press ALT on the reboot cycle). Choose EFI Windows (or the name given to your Boot Camp partition). Windows should start. Reboot again and choose other partition until you find the right one.) Let windows start. At some stage, Windows will ask you to select a partition for it to install, choose the Boot Camp partition (the one you made earlier) and don't format it. Click Next. Windows will install without any problems. It may reboot several times — be sure to let windows reboot on the right partition. Since you have r. EFInd, you don't have to press ALT all the time. Don't bother with the repair disk. Configure Windows has you like. Install Boot Camp drivers. Reboot. Choose the Mac partition. Login. Go to your Root folder and rename folder EFI, to EFI. Select Windows. Start using Windows 7. You're done (except for the remaining setup for Windows including updates). Let me know if you have any problems with these instructions. I've not attempted to recreate the process since (let sleeping dogs lie). Dual Booting Windows Versions. Try Compatibility Mode First. Windows 7 has the ability to run in compatibility mode as far back as Windows 9. You might want to give this a try before attempting to create a dual- boot install. Don't Mix Windows Versions. When installing a second version of Windows, use separate partitions for each (I'd recommend separate hard drives, if possible) so that the resources are not intermingled. Installing a second version of Windows in the same partition will mix the contents of the two versions of Windows, possibly overwriting key files. User Files Handled Differently. Windows 7 and Vista have a very different way of handling many files than XP does, including “user” folders such as My Documents. Windows 9. 5 introduced My Documents, but it was located in C: \My Documents. Windows XP introduced multi- user installations as a default, moving My Documents to C: \Documents and Settings\. Instead of My Documents on the desktop, the User folder appeared, containing My Documents as well as moving the My Music, My Pictures, etc. The All Users became Public. Other important changes made in Vista (and Windows 7) were to move the location of the Application Data folders and to reclassify them under Local, Local. Low and Roaming (with the majority of application using the Roaming to allow sharing between computers as well as between users). Sharing With Different Windows Versions. Windows XP and later should be run on the NTFS file system, but if you want to be able to see the information on these partitions from Windows 9x you'll need to use Fat. Windows 8, 8. 1 and 1. NTFS, but Windows 1. Re. FS, which has several advantages including error correction but can still view files on NTFS. There are great advantages to NTFS, including the ability to handle much larger drives, automatic compression and improved file features, such as private folders. Unless you need to see and dynamically alter the information on the Windows 7 or XP partition when booting to the Windows 9x installation, I'd use NTFS. If you choose NTFS, Windows 9x will be unable to . You'll have to share documents with one of several methods, including: A common drive or partition formatted with the FAT3. This can be either an internal drive or an external USB drive. A USB thumb- drive (you'll need to install drivers for Windows 9. SE). This works if you seldom share information. Obviously, this has limitations if you are going to be continually sharing dynamic information and it will be impossible to share programs. Windows 9x Least Flexible. Windows 9x demands the C: primarypartitions) and is a predatory operating system that will try to write data into any drive or partition that it can read (FAT1. It will offer to format anything it cannot read (such as NTFS or HPFS) if it can . If your programs need direct DOS hardware access, you can create serious issues in dual- booting newer versions of Windows. A Virtual Environment install might be a better solution. Can't Share Program Installations. You will need to install the programs in both versions of Windows, so that the correct information is written into the Windows Registry for each operating system, even if you are sharing the program data. Hyper. OSHyper. OS gives you instantly available spare cloned Windows systems which you can switch to with a double click. The Geek version runs up to 1. Windows systems from your boot drive and up to 1. The Super. Geek version upgrades this to 2. Each active partition becomes the C: drive (required by Windows base files and some other software). Read the site's description for more information. Dual Booting Resources. Return to top. The Multi- OS Environment. The multi- operating system environment has a single computer booting more than one (and usually more than two) operating systems. Unlike booting between different versions of Windows, there tends to be much more that is different than simply the operating system. File systems are often (but not always) incompatible. Hardware Options. You can use various hardware devices to enable you to boot to alternative operating systems. The advantage is that you don't have to worry about one operating system damaging the information or file systems in another operating system's partition. The disadvantage is that it is impossible to share data and/or programs because they are physically separated. Removable Drive Bays. The removable drive bay is an option that is probably not going to work on newer systems but might be suitable if you're running Pentium- era computers. Designed for older ATA drives, the idea was that can be easily swapped for your various OSs. You should be sure to purchase the same brand and model of drawer if you wish to leave the hard drives in the bays and ensure that the correct drawer is purchased if you are running ATA6. As USB throughput improved, these drawer systems became obsolete. Removable USB Drives. Modern USB connections and drives have improved greatly and computers can boot from USB drives. USB 3 throughput is very fast, making this option more realistic. Booting to a USB device might require you to make changes in the BIOS or your computer might provide quick access to a boot priority like pressing a function key like F1. Swapping Cables. If your need for changes is infrequent, you might consider simply swapping the cables inside your computer when you need to switch operating systems. This requires you to open the computer case and is not an option for laptops, but the only cost is the price of the additional hard drive(s). Note that newer computers continue to have power when they are shut down. Be sure to remove the power cable from the computer and ensure external devices and the monitor are turned off (a common power bar works great for this).
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