Loading up XP and Vista at the same time?

blade52x

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Is it possible for me to load up XP and Vista at the same time? I've had XP installed on one hard drive for a long time, and have a new hard drive which I recently installed Vista on. Sometimes I need to go back into XP, and it's annoying having to restart and loading up XP. Anyway to have them running with each other without having to create a virtual operating system?
 
Nope, you won't be running both at the same time on a PC, without the VM option. A dual boot is the only other option, aside from using a second PC. At work, I keep two computers, one for my use with Vista x64 Enterprise, and one with XP Pro SP2 for testing and troubleshooting, since all my users are on XP.
 
I agree with Deacon.
If using a VM you will need to install a new Windows in the VM, you wont be able to use the Windows you have at the moment.
There is no hardware video acceleration in the VM and network adapters are accessed via virtual network adapters etc etc.
3D gaming is a no no in a VM.

You can easily run dual boot by changing the boot drive in the CMOS.
 
Virtualbox (www.virtualbox.org) will *allow* booting an existing hard drive as a virtual machine, but it's very messy since it drops your OS into a brand new environment. Think yanking your hard drive out and putting it in a completely different architecture and booting it. Anyone trying it should be prepared for the worst.

The other factors (loss of 3D acceleration and generally running an OS in a virtualized PC) still apply.

The idea of booting XP and Vista at the same time, maintaining absolute 100% functionality of both.. Wow, if that sort of thing even existed in the SLIGHTEST possible way, wouldn't it have been posted here about 42,000 times, and be very easy to find information on? The closest I can think of is.. Newegg. (ie. build a second PC)
 
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