Advantages to a dual boot system?

Are there any advantages to having a Dual Boot / Multi Boot PC? I have heard about it but the only real information I could find regarding a dual boot system were if you want to run something like Linux and Windows on the same PC.


I have a pc with a 160gb IDE hard drive in it that has windows xp home on it. I also have an extra hard drive (ide as well) (80gb) that I was thinking of installing in the second bay and installing a copy of windows 7 ultimate on that drive. But I'm not sure if that is even possible or even recommended.

From what I have been able to figure out so far that is considered a dual boot system but what I have read so far a dual boot system has both operating systems on one hard drive (which I guess I could do as well since the hdd is 160GB in size and has plenty of room on it).

Is this something that could be done - having a different operating system on different drives in the same pc? Or is it better to create a partition on the larger hdd and install windows 7 on the separate partition and just use the other drive as a slave drive?

If doing so with different hdd how would I select from one os or the other; can I switch back and forth or would I have to shut down and restart the pc to access the other operating system. If both os are on one hdd would the same procedure be followed for selecting an operating system? Also, if both operating systems are on one hard drive would I have to install things like the printer and such again for that other partition?

Can one run both operating systems at the same time and just switch between the two with a few keystrokes?

 

My current PC is dual booted with windows 7 x64 bit with Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu system is alot faster than windows but drivers for windows are alot easier to install than Ubuntu.

One great think about Ubuntu is that it installs within Windows and creates it's own partition on the hard drive which you get to choose which size of partition you want to give it. If you no longer want your PC dual booted then download a program called Revo Uninstaller and that will remove the program. But it depends on which OS you want to dual boot with.

Hope this helps

Andy

 

As simply as possible, you could install Win 7 to your second drive or to a separate partition on the main drive, and the Windows boot manager will be happy with either. You select the OS you want to use at bootup. If you want to use the other OS you have to reboot. All software and drivers have to be installed to each OS, there is no 'communal' area other than, if you choose to create one, a separate data partition which both OSs can use.

An alternative to dual booting is to install a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or VMWare Player and install the second OS in that. In this setup both OSs are available at the same time, but there can be a significant performance penalty depending on your hardware.

 

You have the ideal setup to dualboot with W7 as the mantra is 'oldest to newest' when installing MS OS's. It doesn't matter if it's on the same drive or on a second drive though everything is written on the first drive's MBR. W7 will create a boot menu on its own where you will be able to choose which OS you want to boot.

Since you have an older XP machine then W7 might run very slowly and running it in a virtual environment would probably be impossible. I'd rather dual boot with a Linux distro instead of W7.

 

Dual booting XP Pro with PCLinuxOS 2011.6 and another XP Home with PCLinuxOS MiniME 2011.7. Using the Windows loader NTLDR to boot to Linux so GRUB is installed on the same partition as the Linux OS. A large NTFS partition between the two Operating Systems has music, pictures, etc. and is used by both. XP is on first partition, Multimedia on second, a small swap partition for Linux, and then the Linux Partition / . After the linux install I run dd if=/dev/hdb5 of=./pclosboot.lnx bs=512 count=1 in a terminal as root (hdb5 being the linux partition that PCLOS and GRUB are installed on). The resulting file ( pclosboot.lnx ) is in roots home folder and is copied to the root of the C: drive, where the boot.ini file is. Then by adding the line c:\pclosboot.lnx="PCLinuxOS" to the Windows boot.ini I have the choice of Windows or Linux at boot. My current boot.ini is...

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /PAE /numproc=2
c:\pclosboot.lnx="PCLinuxOS"

naturally Linux is installed on the slower part of the 1 TB HDD but I like my k3b and rubyripper, still have my VLC and Firefox, and Wine for the rare whatever. Course with W7 use of EasyBCD is another option. Never cared for the buntu's much, but that is one of the things that makes Linux great, more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. :yum

 

Thanks for all the suggestions / help. Unfortunately I actually think that I am just as confused as I was to begin with. But at least I now know for sure that I could install windows 7 on one hard drive and leave xp on the other. And I would have to reboot everytime I wanted to switch between one os and the other. I was thinking about it since I have some software programs that are not compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7 and I still use them which is why I was considering this to begin with.

I honestly don't know anything about Linux or Ubuntu or what the advantage would be to using one of those operating systems instead.

I did check the MS site to see if the machine is compatible to run Windows 7 and other than a driver or 2 needing to be updated it said yes. The machine has 2GB of memory, 180gb hdd, Intel Pentium 4 cpu 1.60 GHZ 1.59 GHz Processor.

However, the Windows 7 upgrade advisor did state that my wireless network adapter would need an updated driver - and they do not have a windows 7 compatible driver (was thinking of putting in a wireless network card into the empty pci slot).

The other issue is the ethernet pci network adapter would need a newer driver - found that already so that would not be an issue.

The only other issue is the Windows Aero support - the current graphics adapter doesn't support the windows aero user interface so if I wanted to experience the benefits of Windows Aero I would need to see if an upgrade is available (not something I am concerned with anyway)

 

I wouldn't be concerned about about Aero either as that's just the glitz of W7. You would need a graphics card upgrade to accomplish that which I doubt your present machine could handle anyways, hardware wise.

You could try VirtualPC from MS(free) or while running W7 and run XPMode in there but your machine would be worse off in response time than in dual booting. Try XPMODE anyways, you've got nothing to lose except for some time. You're stuck there until you can upgrade your machine to today's standards and it doesn't have to be near top notch like my machines are either.

I'm assuming here that you have already tried your XP apps in W7's compatibilty mode, maybe that's all you need.

 

If that's all it is then use a virtual machine for XP. I would install VMWare Player in Win 7 and install XP into the VM. It's how I keep access to XP in Win 7 and it works perfectly, with the big bonus that, unlike dual booting, you can access XP without leaving Win 7. The only reservation I would have is that 2GB of memory. It isn't sufficient for a VM setup in Win 7 so get a second 2GB strip and it will then be fine.

If you don't have an XP disk then go with augie's suggestion of XP Mode.

 

Hi

Depending on the version of Windows 7 you have, it has an option called Compatibility Mode, which you can use on any program in order to "trick it" into thinking it's running in any Windows version, from Windows 95 all the way up to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Professional and Ultimate are the only releases that contain Compatibility Mode -- Home Premium DOES NOT have this feature). If you haven't purchased Windows 7 yet, I'd recommend buying the Professional version, as you'll be able to run your incompatible software using this feature. If you've already bought Windows 7, I believe the Anytime Upgrade function would allow you to purchase an upgrade to Professional.

I use Compatibility Mode on several older programs, and it works wonderfully.

 

I run Win 7 on a Pentium 4, 2.66GHz, and have an AGP 8x video card which has a NVidia GeForce 6200 graphics chip with 256 MB of memory on the card. This runs Win 7 Aero fine for what I do with my computer. The Windows Experience Index (WEI) is 2.9.

If you want to try a fairly inexpensive video card upgrade, I suggest http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130654

 

Hello Again,

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. I ran the windows 7 upgrade advisor which is how I found out what is and is not compatible - is that what you mean?

I didn't realize that - I will have to look into that. If that is the case then I am guessing that I could just as easily create a backup of the drive the way it is (just in case) and then do a clean install of windows 7 on that drive (and of course reinstall all the necessary stuff - programs, printer, etc) instead of having a dual boot system!

 

Yes, it would be much easier than having to reboot into a different OS every time you need to use a different program. Definitely smart to backup your drive before committing!

 

I also use windows 7 as my main box, and then use virtual machines of xp, vista, and other os's. Why reboot into something, when you can simply turn on a machine, while still working on your main desktop. The only thing one must has is a bit of ram. Prefer more than 4 gig, imho. Hence why I have 12.

 

A VM is not a realistic option with these specs. Perhaps lmhjcr could list the programs he uses that aren't compatible with Windows 7. Then he could perhaps get alternatives recommended or advice from those who've found a workaround.

 

Hello Again!

just as Just Playin stated I really don't have the proper specs for that. I only have 2GB of ram and that is the max for this machine. But thanks for the suggestion.

I think that I will just create a backup of the system as it is now using acronis and then do a clean install of windows 7 onto that drive since it is a new hard drive and worse case senario I will always have the backup to return things to the way they were.

Thanks So Very Much