VM or dual boot?

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  1. Posts : 1,442
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
       #1

    VM or dual boot?


    I'll sometimes fix other peoples computers that have Vista or Seven on them. I have no experience with 8.1 or Windows 10, so I'd like to install one or the other on my system should I need to fix a computer that has a newer OS. I have a separate HDD that I can install to so I won't mess up my C drive.

    I'm not sure if a VM or dual boot install would be better for this.
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  2. Posts : 79
    Win7 Home Premium x64, Linux Mint 14
       #2

    Seems to be a personal preference so I'm sure you'll get plenty of feedback. I recently set a separate partition up on my C drive and installed Win10 to play with. My reasoning was the C is a SSD so I wanted to see what - if any - performance gains there were with Win10. Nothing went amiss and now there is a dual boot facility.

    Everything went smoothly but whether I keep Win10 is debatable in my head anyway.
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  3. Posts : 20,583
    Win-7-Pro64bit 7-H-Prem-64bit
       #3

    Hi
    I got one of these for a safer dual boot practice because 10 is pretty much an alpha os and can be problematic for other os's and other drives if things go badly
    Amazon.com: Vantec 2.5-Inch Dual Bay Trayless SATA III - 6G Mobile Rack (MRK-225S6-BK): Computers & Accessories

    Otherwise vm is the safest way to browse and test win-10 and also win-8/ 8.1
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  4. Posts : 3,371
    W10 Pro desktop, W11 laptop, W11 Pro tablet (all 64-bit)
       #4

    I like using VMs over dual boot because I can have as many VMs as I have disk space for. I can have both Win 10 32 & 64 bit, Win 8 32 & 64, XP, Vista, ME, Win 7, any number of Linux distros, etc... all available to boot up. If I decide I no longer want a particular VM I can simply delete it.

    I personally haven't setup a dual boot machine in over 10 years.
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  5. Posts : 1,442
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #5

    What's a good VM to run? I have a book (studying to take the A+ exam), and it lists "Windows Virtual PC" and "Oracle VirtualBox".
    I have a 2TB internal drive to use as a VM drive. That should be enough space, correct?
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  6. Posts : 13,576
    Windows 10 Pro x64
       #6

    M V PC is old, not sure if it`s even usable with 8.1 or 10, it does not show them as a guest. Details in snip.

    VMware workstation player is a good free one. 3rd from the bottom.

    https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails VM or dual boot?-capture.jpg  
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  7. Posts : 1,797
    Win 7 Ultimate, Win 8.1 Pro, Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon (All 64-Bit)
       #7

    I use Virtualbox. It has some bugs, plugging in USB devices can be a little temperamental at times, but it's updated regularly. Has a lot of options for customising the VM and has snapshots which are a handy feature for testing software. I think you can achieve the same thing in VMware player by right clicking on the VHD and selecting "Restore Previous Version", although I haven't tried it.
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  8. Posts : 6,285
    Windows 10 Pro X64
       #8

    Oracle Virtualbox is very good. I run Win 10 Pro X64 on a quad core Lenovo with 16GBV ram and I have the followi9ng VMs setup.

    VM or dual boot?-oraclevb-vms.jpg
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  9. Posts : 1,442
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #9

    I've installed Windows Virtual PC which came with XP mode. I ran XP mode and it wants me to download a file. I'm not sure which file I need.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails VM or dual boot?-xp-mode.png  
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  10. Posts : 1,442
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #10

    Got my answer.
    WindowsXPMode_N_en-us.exe doesn't come with Windows Media Player (for Europe).

    Would having multiple VM's installed cause any issues like having multiple anti-viruses installed?
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