dual boot problems

Hi everyone. I am new to this forum, having come hoping to find some help with my problem. :confused
Thanks in advance to anyone who helps.

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop, running W7 Ultimate. I have a need to run WinXP also, in order to use a program that won't even load onto W7. (The virtual XP mode also does not help.)

So, I need to dual boot with XP. I have a full version of XP and have tried to load it, booting from the CD drive with the disc in. However, after spending a number of minutes reading from the disc the computer gives me a message informing me that the computer has shut down as it has detected a potential threat. Thus, it will not go any further with loading XP.

Also, my intention ideally would be to load XP onto a memory stick, and just boot from there when I wish to use XP. My computer does give the option of a USB boot. Is this going to work or do I need to load the XP onto the internal single HDD ?

So , again, thanks for any input. :confused

Regards

cajadaj

 

Loading XP after, rather than before Win 7 can be problematic. At the very least a right palaver. An alternative, which I use, is to install a virtual machine and install XP to that. Apart from being a bit slower than the host system a virtual machine is otherwise little different from a full install.

I have been astonished at just how capable Virtual Box is, and fully recommend it. Mine also has Kubuntu and Win 7 RC VMs, running in a Vista host.

 

btw, forgot to add that you can't boot Windows from a USB device.

 

Thanks for this.

 

Going to read up on that. So VM, it's like Wubi?? Yep will be slower though, as you say. Better hardware will be required as opposed to a dual boot, me thinks.
Cheers.

 

Virtual Box is rather more versatile than Wubi, in that you can install it in almost any host system, not just Windows, and once installed you can then install almost any other OS to it. It obviously helps to have decent hardware, though my three year old Medion MD8818 with 3GB RAM copes easily with it, so slowdown isn't a big issue. You do need a largish partition for the host system, as each new VM you add will need up to about 20GB depending on how you use it. 100-120GB is about right for the host system, more if you also keep your personal stuff on the same partition.

Although the VM hijacks the host's USB system, network adapters and optical drives it actually communicates with the host via the local network, not directly. Each treats the other as just another device on the network.

It's a bit mind bending when I get Vista, Win 7, XP and Kubuntu all running at the same time

 

Thanks for that. Time to experiment, without H/jacking the OP's thread :-o
Cheers and a Happy New Year to all:wine:guitar

 

I did have a look at the virtual box web site. There does seem quite a lot to it, in terms of loading it and seting it up, but I did only flip through it quite quickly so perhaps it's easier than it appears ? :confused

So, am I right in thinking that if I load virtual box and create a VM on my HDD, I could then load Win XP into that, and then successfuly load my 'XP only' program into that ..??

Thanks again

 

Nearly. You first load Virtual Box as a program on your Win 7 system, then continue as you say.

There is a bit of configuration involved, mainly to get full keyboard/mouse integration and full screen display, but it's not rocket science at all, and help is available here. Give it a go.