Switching between 2 Operating Systems within Windows Vista?

Question

Basically I have windows vista home premium and windows XP Media Center installed on my computer, so I have dual boot. I am looking for a programme that allows you to switch between a different OS within windows vista so e.g. I can access XP from within Windows Vista just through a third party application. I heard Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 does it but apparently it is not compatible with vista home premium!!. I would appreciate it if anyone would suggest any other bit of software that would do the same job and would be reliable (meaning that they have tested it out themselves) and not just recommend it. Because it took me a quite a bit of time to get dual boot running on my pc and functioning properly (from two separate hard drives) and I do not want to corrupt any of my OS’S.

Answer 1

Doing a Virtual machine (accessing xp from within vista) you have to reinstall XP as a Virtual Machine. meaning what ever you access from Vista, has nothing to do with the other boot version of XP. (so really you would have two versions of XP on your machine).



I'm just telling you, that what you want to do isn't accessing your dual boot. You actually do need to boot xp. The virtual machine is what boots its copy of xp.

Answer 2

Just to confirm airdogspace's answer:



When you install a virtual machine, you'd then have to install another XP from scratch within the VM. Meaning everything, the OS, drivers and programs. Is that worth the inconvenience of rebooting between XP and Vista on your existing setup?

Answer 3

sure! maximum Linux distributions will set up what's customary as a "bootloader". This application (maximum use the GRUB bootloader or the recent GRUB2 bootloader) shows a menu that lists each and every of the working platforms put in on your computing gadget and you spotlight which one you go with to run with the arrows. It shows the menu once you first turn on your computing gadget, to alter working platforms in basic terms reboot your computing gadget. i'm going with to advise Ubuntu Linux when you consider that i've got used it plenty and it installs GRUB (GRUB2 interior the latest version) immediately. you're able to desire to shrink homestead windows XP's partition length to make room for Ubuntu, nevertheless it could try this for you in case you're not sure a thank you to manually shrink a partition.

Answer 4

VMWare Server (free) will do exactly what you are looking for.