New
#1
Dual Booting
Hi guys. I just got my hands on Windows XP 64-Bit. I currently have Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit installed on my C drive. The last time I formatted my PC was roughly just before the 10th of January, (the 8th, I think), and I tried to install Dual-Booting with XP Pro 32-Bit, and Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit. But the install for XP screwed it up and XP wouldn't start-up, due to I believe was that XP 32-Bit couldn't handle more than 3gb of RAM, which I have 4GB. So I figured I'd need XP 64-Bit to install for me to use XP on my machine.
Now, I have a couple of questions about installing XP 64-Bit on one of my partitions, even though I'm pretty computer literate; I don't want to accidentally screw up my system. I've had Windows 7 32-Bit on my system since Jan, of this year without much problems (besides maybe a few BSOD's here and there). I also have 2 physical drives in my machine, and 4 letter drives. My E and F drives are roughly about 75% or 80% full of stuff, my D drive is only roughly 60% or 65% full. I want to install XP on one of my drives (preferably E or F). My D drive is mostly just games, and my E/F drives have mostly "downloads" I accumulated over the past few years. (I tend to keep files on my computer in case I might need them later, I'm what you could call a "pack rat" when it comes to computer files).
Even though I want to use E or F as my XP drive, I think D is more realistic due to it having the biggest space remaining.
Now, the big question for me is: How many gigabytes of RAM can Windows 64-Bit handle without it not being able to run? When I mean "not being able to run" is where I'll go through the setup after hitting a key to run setup when it says "Press any key to run setup" when it runs the setup from the DVD, that's when my XP 32-Bit would just get stuck with, and it also screwed up my Windows 7 setup, so I had to format both drives and reinstall Windows 7 (this was right after I formatted 3 letter drives (I had 5) and combined 2 into 1 so I had 4 letter drives instead of 5.).
I'm going to assume that the XP 64-Bit won't screw up my Windows 7 setup that's already installed? And will it make me have to format Drive D in order to install, or will it simply just let me choose to let the drive be? If not, oh well, I can just format the D drive and reinstall all of the games I have. Either that, or I can just burn all the really necessary files from the E drive and format that instead.
Anyone elses thoughts are appreciated. Go ahead and throw a few at me. I don't have any external drives either, so that's out.