Running XP within Windows 7

AugustusMinimus

Basic story is that I've got both XP and Windows 7 installed on my computer on two seperate partitions.

I'm just wondering which programme or porgrammes I'd need to get to be able to boot both operating system at the same time. Being able to boot XP while running Windows 7 would be nice.

Might open the possibility for me of installing XP on an external HD and booting it when I need within Windows 7. At the moment, I can't primarily boot from an external HD as my BIOS doesn't allow it.

Rambo

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

Basic story is that I've got both XP and Windows 7 installed on my computer on two seperate partitions.

I'm just wondering which programme or porgrammes I'd need to get to be able to boot both operating system at the same time. Being able to boot XP while running Windows 7 would be nice.

Might open the possibility for me of installing XP on an external HD and booting it when I need within Windows 7. At the moment, I can't primarily boot from an external HD as my BIOS doesn't allow it.

VirtualBox will do the job make sure you have plenty of memory install..

http://dlc.sun.com/virtualbox/vboxdownload.html#windows

brianwalshcork

or microsoft virtual PC.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

Putting the virtual hard drive on an external disc connected by USB may not give the best performance though.

I think that you'll have to do a clean installation of xp and re-install your apps into it. As far as I know, there no physical to virtual convertor for MS VPC. I don't know if there is one for Virtual Box.

Maybe start with a small virtual hard drive 3- 4 GB, in the partition that currently contains XP, then if your happy with it, you can remove the physical xp installation.

brianwalshcork

Google tells me that I'm wrong!

P2V for MS VPC
http://v-irtualization.com/2009/10/19/free-physical-to-virtual-disk2vhdp2v-tool-for-microsoft-virtual-pc-or-hyper-v/

P2V step by step for virtualbox
http://www.sysprobs.com/physical-virtual-virtualbox-virtualbox-p2v

There may be better ways, those are just the first two I found.

AugustusMinimus

Great stuff. Thanks for the reply guys.

Just one question. If I use either of the two last tools, does this mean I wouldn't be able to boot independently into the XP partition afterwards ?

CptSternn

Why would you dual boot with Windows 7? Google Windows 7 XP Mode - you can install it and open a window that is a shell running XP. It's basically a VM client for Windows 7 that runs a legit copy of XP for you.

Then again, you can always right click the icon of any app and tell it to run in any shell mode you want and 99% of the time that will make whatever app you are trying to run work perfectly in W7.

Dual booting these days of desktop VM is an archaic craft which is no longer used.

brianwalshcork

OP, if you have home premium XP mode won't work for you, you'll need professional, enterprise or ultmate. If you have any of these, it might be worth trying out. I haven't used it though.