Following on from other post with software not being vista friendly ive looked at dual boot as recommended but have found virtual PC 2007 and virtualbox 2007.

From what i read virtual pc does not support usb but virtualbox does.

Has anyone used the above software?

All i want is xp installed just to run 1 panel software program. (at present anyway)

lads.

Adi

If you want to virtualise then virtual pc or VMware

VMware supports USB.

But id suggest dualbooting.

Why james??

Why james??

Less messy,

Demands less resources

I thought and have read, its a lot easier to install a virtual machine. Especially as it will be rarely used.

Less messy maybe - pity they don't do a "Live CD" like they do with many version of Linux, would have it put cd in, boot it up and save all the panel settings to a USB pen drive.

All though I have heard it is possible to boot XP from a USB stick.

Only issue I'd see with any "Virutal PC" is how much RAM you have in the system as you'd still have to allow for vista to be part loaded into memory..

Dual booting isn't too hard it's just making sure that your XP partition is totally seperate from the Vista one, easy enough done with something like Partition Magic, I'd say 3Gb partition would do for XP, install programs I even think Partition Magic can set up Dual boot for you as well..

Edited November 10, 200817 yr by Gopher

But am i not right in thinking that you cant add a partition, i have to start again thus wiping everything off and havivg to reload everything?

But am i not right in thinking that you cant add a partition, i have to start again thus wiping everything off and havivg to reload everything?

Yes, You can add another partition.

However, if i recall correctly, the boot manager needs a bit of tweaking if Vista is already loaded.

or an external usb hard drive IF your laptop supports booting from it

External USB drive would be good, Partition Magic takes care of all that, you down size the existing partition by 3-4gb,add an new extended partition, if one doesn't exist - some put Recovery Partition as an extended partition, or expand the current extended partition to include the freed space, add new drive in to the space created. Sound more complex than it actually is..

5 steps maybe in PM, boot magic does the hard stuff it still might need a kick since it's vista, never tested it with vista..

I did try and resize my Windows partition using the disk manager in windows it told me to get stuffed...

If your not sure on what to do maybe local guru might do it for you, just make sure you've got a backup (I do know a few that claimed guru status but well hmm drive wiped everything lost, and I got rather annoyed at someone for it.)