Separating programs between Users

Honestly I reckon the Dual Boot option is probably easiest. I really should have asked this before sorry. How did Windows 7 come on your machine? was it preinstalled? or do you have a disk?

thats alright :)

Great, I was really hoping you were going to say that. This makes my job alot easier.

Ok well I'm not going to be writing anything tonight, I'm up to my ears in Sims 3 Code at the moment working on a mod. I'll put the guide together tomorrow for you though, should be up by tomorrow evening (GMT+1)

Ok here we go, Severedsolo's Easy Peasy guide to dual booting Windows 7 with Windows 7

I'm going to assume that as you build your own machine you already know how to install 7, if not then get a quick reminder here: Custom Install Windows 7

The first thing we need to do, is to make some space for your new installation and for the Save files. Now as the dual boot is going to need an Antivirus as well, I would suggest giving it about 90GB as a minimum to play with. We also need to give the Save Files 10GB (again this should be more than enough, but we need to be sure)

Before Starting please take Backups just in case. Nothing SHOULD go wrong, but occasionally (very rarely) Partitioning fails.

Print this guide before you start, as you won't have access to it while Installing.

1) Open up Disk Management

2) Right click your "C" Drive and click Shrink Volume

3)Wait while it checks available space

4) When it asks how much to shrink it by put this number in: 102400 (thats 100GB in MB) then click Next

5) When its done you should see a section called "Unallocated Space 100GB"

6) Right Click the Unallocated Space and then click "New Simple Volume"

7) When it asks for how much space to give it put this number in: 92160

8) When it asks for a label type something like "Dual Boot" (no quotes) (this is handy for later as we need to remember which is which)

9) When its done (it can take a little while) Right Click the Remaining 10GB Unallocated space and click New Simple Volume, this time give it whatevers left, and give it a label of "CAW Saves" (no quotes)

10) Stick your Win 7 DVD in and Reboot, boot from the DVD and go through the Installation process, make sure you install Win 7 to the "Dual Boot" partition and NOT any others, or you will wipe out your windows installation.

11) After the 2nd reboot you will see two options when you boot "Windows 7" and "Windows 7" the top one is your dual boot, select it and press enter (It will do that automatically anyway if you dont select anything for 30 seconds)

12) When it reaches the "Enter your product key" screen UNCHECK "Automatically Activate Windows when i'm online" and leave the product key blank.

13) Once Windows has booted, the First thing you need to do is install an Antivirus. I recommend MSE as it's free. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

14) Next, we need to relocate your User Files. Open up Computer, and see what label it has given "CAW saves" (it should be D:, E: or F:) then go to your User Profile (C:\Users\<username>) Right click on My Documents and then click Properties, click the Location tab and change the path to (whatever letter it gave CAW files):\Documents

15) you can do this with the other Folders too if you want, but it isn't strictly necessary.

16) At this point you can change the amount of time you have to choose the OS on the Dual Boot menu if you want, type msconfig into the Startmenu and click the only option that comes up. then click the boot tab and change "Timeout" to whatever you want, I have mine at 5, so I'm not waiting around forever to boot. Also you can set your other Windows (Main Windows) as Default if you want from here too.

17) Boot into your other copy of Windows, and go Computer>CAW Saves double click on Documents. It will probably tell you that you don't have permission. Click Continue. this will give you full access rights to the Folder (which will be needed later)

18) Install CAW and Sims 3 to the Dual boot copy of Windows. CAW should automatically save its files to the CAW Saves\Documents Folder (there is a very good reason we want it on a seperate partition, otherwise it won't be able to get permission due to the Other copy of Windows.

Remember by the way, that any Worlds Created With CAW will need to be relocated to the Sims 3 folder (Documents\Electronic Arts\Sims 3 I think) to be loaded into the game

I think thats everything. Just one last thing, Your Dual Boot copy of Windows is only good for 30 days, after which it will prompt you to activate windows. To get around this, when your time runs out (or is close to running out) open an elevated Command Prompt (right click, Run as Administrator) and type in: slmgr.vbs –rearm then hit enter. You can do this twice, (giving you 90 days before it needs to be reinstalled, but reinstalling won't wipe out your CAW saves)

I'm going to be away on Holiday for two weeks, but if you have any follow up questions please ask. I know that Tim will be more than happy to answer them for you :)

@V1A2,

In addition to severedsolo's excellent post, you may elect to install an earlier version of windows that you have a legit license key for. If you do this, you will probably find that you can't boot into windows 7 until after you run a repair on it with the Win7 DVD or USB installation media. This is because earlier versions of windows don't know that Win7 exists. If you decide to do this, then please let us know so we can show you what it involves before moving forward. Just a heads up in case you try it.

In regards to the virtual machine solution that I offered earlier. I always use these unless I'm playing high end games that I really want perfect graphics for). You would need enough RAM to run the game and your PC (because it's like two computers in one).

Some free virtual machines are:
- Windows Virtual Machine
- VMWARE workstation (requires registration)

Good luck mate.