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Dual boot XP - Win7
I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I
would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? johns |
#2
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Dual boot XP - Win7
johns wrote:
I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? johns I can see an example of a solution here, but this fixes WinXP deleting the more modern OS restore points. This would hide the Windows 7 volume, so WinXP can't see it. (I don't understand, why the articles have no concerns about the other direction. I would have thought changes could be made to WinXP, that would cause the SR points there to be invalidated as well.) http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/12...ot-delete.html http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2008/06...m-restore-bug/ "Personally, I no longer recommend dual-boot setups at all. I prefer using Virtual PC, VMWare, or another virtualization solution to run XP in a virtual machine under Vista. On those rare occasions when I need to test XP and Vista on the same hardware, I swap the hard drives and access shared data files from a server to avoid this issue." So there is an opinion for you. ******* One way to solve this problem, with hardware, is by using SCSI drives. I selected the cheapest, reasonable brand I could find. You'd need a controller card too, to connect up the drive. You can find cheap cards for it, if you keep your eyes open. (I have a couple, but they're not ultra 320 or anything.) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148279 Then, downloaded a manual for it. http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/s...100384776j.pdf On PDF page 47, it has a WP or Write Protect jumper location. (J6 jumper block, only available on LW drive in this particular case.) If you purchase a toggle switch, a pair of wires, and female pins to plug onto the WP position of J6, you can have a write protect switch mountable on the front of the computer. If you had two SCSI drives, you could WP A and boot B, or WP B and boot A. By making the alternate drive "read-only" with the jumper, no worries about system restore. Will the OS complain about finding a read-only drive ? Probably :-) But a hardware "gate" to prevent writing, means no kludgy software solutions to this problem. Your data drive can then be a large IDE, while two small SCSI drives function as separate boot drives. ******* With regard to running apps from a second OS, apps come in two flavors. 1) Applications dependent on registry structures to be in place. If a program has an installer, and the installer is the only thing that can put the right registry structures in place, then you *have* to use the installer. The installer might, for example, be handling the licensing key. 2) Other applications may be designed to be portable. If you look at a lot of stuff on Sysinternals.com , the programs there are portable. You could boot an alternate OS, and execute one of them. If you installed Firefox in WinXP, then booted Windows 7 and ran it, Firefox does a runtime install of its "Profile" folder. So programs can and do install things at runtime. But they may also have good reason, to be adding structures via the installer. There is at least one other folder with Firefox stuff in it, and I don't know if that is a runtime feature or not. Something you'd expect to be anal, would be Microsoft Office. If you installed that on WinXP, then booted Windows 7 and double clicked one of the .exe files, there's no way that is going to run. Applications can be designed for portability. But, there has to be a reason to support it. Think of the difficulties, if you design a portable app, but need different behaviors or preferences, when operated in Win98 versus Windows 7. In such a situation, using the registry is the perfect solution, as it is a "per-OS" solution. You can do it with your own preferences storage solution, but it'll mean keeping separate settings for each OS environment used. ******* In terms of virtual machine options, you can use VPC2007 to run an OS within your new OS. You could run WinXP inside a separate window with VPC2007. Certain versions of Windows 7, support "WinXP Mode", which is a separate copy of WinXP and its own license, with "terminal services" display implementation. It allows a WinXP program to be "rootless", so there isn't a box drawn around the desktop area like in VPC2007. Each WinXP mode application launched, opens a window as if it was displaying native in Windows 7. But the window is a Terminal Services window. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...indows_XP_Mode Your existing OS can be virtualized as well, lock, stock and barrel. Try this for example. When "pulled into a virtual machine", the hardware environment is entirely different. The OS will need to be re-activated, against the new hardware. If you have a Dell, obviously the license key issue is going to be an issue. If you have a non-royalty OEM install, as long as you haven't done an install lately, you might get away with it. I've tested this, but didn't activate it (I disconnected the network cable while testing). This even has a feature, to correct the HAL option, to account for the multicore original environment, to single core VPC2007 environment differences. I think it's an amazing utility, considering it did the job without issues. (I've tried other recipes that failed.) You run the resulting .vhd file, in a VPC2007 virtual machine. That would allow you to run the programs used in that OS, without physically having to reinstall them. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/s.../ee656415.aspx Those two examples of virtual environments are no good for games, but are OK for other more serious kinds of work. I tried another virtual environment the other day, but it was a "flaky pastry" and not even worth mentioning. Paul |
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Dual boot XP - Win7
"johns" wrote:
I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? Since you'll have the two OSes on separate HDs, why not just disable one or the other HD in the BIOS at startup? Or, you could put the HDs on removeable trays that slide into a rack that is installed in an unused bay and just choose the OS by choosing which tray to slide in? Otherwise, if you do regualar backups, do you really care if you lose a restore point? *TimDaniels* |
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Dual boot XP - Win7
On 07/11/2010 02:46, johns wrote:
I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? johns Before I installed Windows 7, I had, and still do, a copy of WinXP on my HD. I partitioned this hardrive and made a 100GB partition for Windows 7. I then insterted the Win7 Disc, and selected 'Custom' Install This allowed me to select the partition I wanted to install Windows 7 on to. Once this process was complete, my PC rebooted, several times during the install process, and finally showed a screen which had Windows 7 and WindowsXP to choose to boot from. Its been like that for a while now and works perfectly for me. |
#5
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Dual boot XP - Win7
"Bob H" wrote:
johns wrote: I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? johns Before I installed Windows 7, I had, and still do, a copy of WinXP on my HD. I partitioned this hardrive and made a 100GB partition for Windows 7. I then insterted the Win7 Disc, and selected 'Custom' Install This allowed me to select the partition I wanted to install Windows 7 on to. Once this process was complete, my PC rebooted, several times during the install process, and finally showed a screen which had Windows 7 and WindowsXP to choose to boot from. Its been like that for a while now and works perfectly for me. Johns's concern is about the overwriting of restore points. One OS (I forget which one) overwrites the restore point of the other OS. If one doesn't rely on restore points, this concern is moot. I, for one, don't rely on restore points since I make periodic backups. *TimDaniels* |
#6
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Dual boot XP - Win7
On 07/11/2010 16:36, Timothy Daniels wrote:
"Bob H" wrote: johns wrote: I'm thinking about installing Win7 on my XP system, and I would like to set up dual boot .. if it is safe to do so. I have a new 2nd 500 gig hard drive, so Win7 would go on it's own drive. I've been reading the groups, and there seems to be some pitfalls, but I'm not sure if they are real. One poster says that when he boots Win7, it removes all of his XP restore points. Not good. Another poster replied and said that was because he did not hide the XP partition from Win7. He said you can't go over to that partition and run anything because Win7 will then write over the XP setup. He says any access to the XP programs, or anything will cause big trouble. Anybody tried this dual boot ? Can you hide the partitions from each other ? johns Before I installed Windows 7, I had, and still do, a copy of WinXP on my HD. I partitioned this hardrive and made a 100GB partition for Windows 7. I then insterted the Win7 Disc, and selected 'Custom' Install This allowed me to select the partition I wanted to install Windows 7 on to. Once this process was complete, my PC rebooted, several times during the install process, and finally showed a screen which had Windows 7 and WindowsXP to choose to boot from. Its been like that for a while now and works perfectly for me. Johns's concern is about the overwriting of restore points. One OS (I forget which one) overwrites the restore point of the other OS. If one doesn't rely on restore points, this concern is moot. I, for one, don't rely on restore points since I make periodic backups. *TimDaniels* I don't use restore points either as I do backups as well as keeping data separate from the OS. If the OS crashes or needs to be restored, it takes less than a day to get everything back how it was. |
#7
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Dual boot XP - Win7
One of the warnings came from a poster who said that
when he actually had to use an XP restore point, he lost the dual boot feature. Win7 was gone, and he had to go through the install again. It sounds to me like the best idea is to simply move the data cable to the OS I want to boot. My data and backups are on an external drive anyway, so it is just a small hassle to open the case side door and move the cable. Now, what would be really neat is if somebody out there has a manual sata switch box that I could place on the desk right beside the PC .. or even mount it along the side door. I already do that with my DSL modem. I have a laptop and a PC desktop, and I only use one on-line at a time, so my RJ45 cables from each box go to the manual switch box .. and that goes out to the modem. Same deal with my USB printer. I found a manual USB switch box, and I can select the printer that way. Which means I don't have a lot of wasted power, and the setup was very very simple. Also, my PC is a super-fast game box, so I don't want to mess around with that. Game boxes are not always OS friendly. johns |
#8
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Dual boot XP - Win7
On Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:30:16 -0800, johns wrote:
[snip] It sounds to me like the best idea is to simply move the data cable to the OS I want to boot. If you have enough data connectors, you may find it easier to switch the power. I've done that before, with 2 versions of Windows. Also, there's fewer wires to change, so you might connect your own switch in an extra 5,25-inch bay. [snip] I already do that with my DSL modem. [snip] Same deal with my USB printer. [snip] The normal solution to those problems (modem and printer) would be networking. -- 48 days until The winter celebration (Saturday December 25, 2010 12:00:00 AM). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." -- Bertrand Russell |
#9
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Dual boot XP - Win7
"johns" mused:
[....] Now, what would be really neat is if somebody out there has a manual sata switch box that I could place on the desk right beside the PC .. or even mount it along the side door. [.......] You can do that with external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an onboard eSATA port. You can also do that by extending a normal SATA cable to an external SATA hard drive enclosure. But I don't think you're listening. You can do virtually that with a removeable HD tray. They're sometimes called "hard drive caddies" or "mobile racks". Kingwin makes/imports a big selection of them, and here's what they have for SATA hard drives: http://kingwin.com/products/cate/mob...obileracks.asp You can just slide in the hard drive containing the OS that you want, and it becomes an internal hard drive with all the speed advantages that come with it. It is NOT a "USB drive". Or..., if you have room for two racks, you can just leave both trays in their respective racks and use their power switches to enable or disable a hard drive. Or, you can do as I do: Feed each of your internal hard drives' power cables through DPST micro toggle switches and enable or disable the HD by switching its power on or off. I have 3 such switches mounted in 1/4" diam. holes in the front of the case that are for ventilation just inside the plastic fascia, and I reach in with a paper clip to flip the switches. (Of course, this must be done when the PC is OFF.) With the power for a hard drive off, no virus is going to get into it, either. *TimDaniels* |
#10
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Dual boot XP - Win7
On Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:06:20 -0800, Timothy Daniels wrote:
[snip] Or, you can do as I do: Feed each of your internal hard drives' power cables through DPST micro toggle switches and enable or disable the HD by switching its power on or off. Is there some benefit to using separate switches rather than one multi- position switch? [snip] *TimDaniels* -- 47 days until The winter celebration (Saturday December 25, 2010 12:00:00 AM). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us "Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought." -- Graham Greene, 1981 |
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