PCA Forums

Never tried dual booting. Been reading about it to get more familiar with it.

I currently have XP Pro (sp3) installed (32 bit). I preordered that Windows 7 (Professional) upgrade disk at that reduced price. I figured I'm going to switch sometime so went ahead and made the choice. When I get around to installing Windows 7, gonna take the 64 bit plunge this time.

I am considering dual booting. Not sure at this time if I want to cut loose XP completely from the start before completely checking out Windows 7. Thinking about the posibility that I may lose some programs I currently have and wondering which ones they will be. Also considering "XP Mode" in Windows 7 for this same reason.

Anyway, from reading about dual booting, I can't find information I'm really looking for. I pretty much have it down on how to do the install (installing Windows 7 on a separate partition). What I really want to know are experiences with the behavior of using both OS's after they are installed.

For example. I have xp installed now with lots of programs. I assume when booting from Windows 7, I would still see those programs, just wouldn't be able to use them. Is that correct? I would then have to pick which of those programs I wanted to try to run in Windows 7 and install them again in Windows 7, in a different location that they were already in Windows XP. Is that also correct?

The main thing I'm trying to figure out here is which of my programs in XP will run in Windows 7. If they all worked, I could then just get rid of XP altogether. If some that I couldn't live without didn't work in Windows 7, then I would have to decide if I wanted to continue with the dual boot option or try the "XP Mode" function of Windows 7 to see if that would be better.

I'd love to hear comments/experiences from you dual booters!

No you can't share apps or the apps folders. Each OS needs to be in it's own partition with it's own apps (ESPECIALLY if one is x86 and the other is x64). You can share data though - for instance you can tell both OSes to use the same folder for your Documents folder.

You probably don't want to dual boot in the standard MS manner because it will involve a lot of pain. You're supposed to install the newer OS first (Win7) and then let it manage the dual boot. Win7 also creates a hidden partition and will change your boot partition so removing it and going back to XP only later if you need to will be difficult or impossible.

A better approach is to install Win7 on a separate hard drive and use the BIOS menu to enable the drive for the OS you want to boot from, and disable the other (and ideally keep your shared data on a 3rd hard drive). Once you commit to Win7 you can just pull to XP drive, or vice-a-versa if you decide to stay with XP.

HOWEVER, be aware that Win7 Professional will include "XP Mode" which is full seamless virtualization of Win XP under Win7. You will be able to create a shortcut to launch an XP only app in WinXP Pro in a VM under Win7. XP Mode will be a separate download:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtua ... nload.aspx

I agree with the separate hard drive idea. I have done that in the past, it really does simplify things. Most motherboards have a setting in the bios to just change hard drive boot priority and allow you to select the drive you want to boot from by default.