Dual-booting questions..

[Blades]

I currently have Windows 7 H-P 64-Bit installed on my Sony laptop. I want to install Windows XP on the same computer, and don't want the two OSs to really have anything to do with each other.

I was planning to follow this article. However, it mentions that XP will delete all of my restore points once it boots up. Reading this article only shows how to stop it from within XP, assuming it has already deleted the points.

My question is, is there any way to install XP as a second OS, and not have it delete all my 7 restore points first time it turns on?

Many thanks.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi Blades and a warm welcome to the forum.

That's a tough question. I've read both of Brinks's tutorials and I can't see a way round it. Perhaps the man himself will come along and enlighten us both.
I'm all in favour of dual boots from an insurance perspective but I can't see why you would want to dual boot with XP. Is there something you have that won't run in XP mode in W7?

Cheers, John

 

[Blades]

Thank you!

I was actually hoping to have both 32-bit and 64-bit native environments on one machine, as when I run something 32-bit on 7 (Like Opera), it takes up a giant amount of RAM. So I was hoping to run those sorts of programs in XP, but take advantage of 64-bit programs in 7.

Perhaps the trick is to prevent Windows XP from seeing 7, at least temporarily. Maybe make it a hidden partition or something of the sort?

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that I don't have the Pro edition, so I can't use XP mode. I also have only 2GB RAM (the laptop's max), so I can't use it efficiently anyways.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Blades, welcome to Seven Forums!





The trick is to hide W_7 from XP during install not the other way around; I would use care 'hiding' partitions as you may bite off more than you can chew and lose the "Permissions" to a specific partition; some even hide whole Hard Disk Drives (HDD) that cannot be un-done once activated; just a heads-up.

 

[johnwillyums]

I agree with BFK and hiding a partition is not something I would personally attempt. I'm surprised you find Opera eats your RAM in 64 bit. I am all x64. There are no 64 bit browsers as such (FF Minefield?).
I use Opera, Chrome and Firefox (depending on my mood) and don't find any of them particularly heavy on RAM, especially Chrome which seems to have the smallest footprint on my machine.

 

[Blades]

I see. I was planning to use GParted to make it "hidden". Will that work?

Opera eats up about 500mb upwards when I am in x64, however when I am on my 32-bit machine, under the same workload, it eats about 200 or so mb. I'm not really sure why. I do have a spare XP license from a broken computer, so in the least I want to use it instead of having it lie dormant.

 

[gregrocker]

You don't have enough RAM to run 64 bit. Need at least 4gb.

Try IE8 which is finally perfect in Win7, has better features and is rock solid stable. I got rid of the others.

The best way to Dual Boot is on separate HD's unplugged during other OS install.

As you have a laptop, next best would be to start up WIn7 after XP install by marking it active and running Startup Repair x3, then use EasyBCD 2.0 from Win7 to Add XP: accept offered boot files, autocompletes, Save, Restart.

 

[Blades]

I never liked IE's interface, and isn't Adobe Flash Player still incompatible with x64 browsers on Windows?

Microsoft says 2GB ram is enough to run 64-bit, and indeed it runs fine when Opera doesn't eat up all the RAM.

I don't understand how that method fixes the deleting restore points problem? Could you clarify please.

 

[gregrocker]

I have never heard of any case where someone would run 64 bit Win7 with 2gb RAM. Others may differ.

Configuring Multi Boot from Win7 is easier. EasyBCD 2.0 works better. You don't have to install Net Framework 2.0.

The restore points issue was supposedly solved by MS in beta, but other issues can crop up with a Multi Boot on same HD.

Be sure to let us know how it works for you.

 

[Blades]

Oh, I see; so the issue is not part of Windows 7 release? That clears things up, thanks !

 

[johnwillyums]

I never liked IE's interface, and isn't Adobe Flash Player still incompatible with x64 browsers on Windows?

Microsoft says 2GB ram is enough to run 64-bit, and indeed it runs fine when Opera doesn't eat up all the RAM.

I don't understand how that method fixes the deleting restore points problem? Could you clarify please.

As I said before, there are no x64 browsers except FF Minefield which is some kind of experimental beta.
The reason for this is that there is no x64 Adobe Flash.
I believe Adobe are addressing this at the moment but upcoming releases of IE, FF, Chrome and Opera will have support for HTML5 and various other stuff that will make the lack of Flash academic as they will allow video playback in the browser.
I would follow Greg's advice on the dual boot.
I have a friend who runs W7x64 with 2GB of RAM but it doesn't peform well. Can't you get another 2GB of RAM for your laptop?
If not ,why not stick to 32 bit until you upgrade your machine.
To be honest you won't notice much difference. There isn't much x64 software out there as yet and what there is will run fine on x86 anyway.

All the best, John

 

[Blades]

Nope, 2GB is the laptops max. I thought about using 32-bit, but the CPU (Core 2 Duo) is 64-bit, so I thought it a waste. To be honest, it doesn't run bad at all, certainly better than Vista 32-bit in the same configuration. It's only the 32-bit applications eating up huge amounts of RAM.

I am currently in the process. I will let you guys know how it goes.

 

[Blades]

I finally got it working. Admittedly, most of the problems stemmed from the crappy drivers from Sony. Then Windows update screwed almost everything up inexplicably, so I had to reinstall XP.

After doing all that, I now have a working XP/7 installation. It's great! Thank you all for your help.

 

[johnwillyums]

Glad to hear you got it sorted Blades Stick around, this is a great forum, John

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Glad to see you have it sorted and thanks for the update.