Multiple OS's

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brian V
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Brian V

Anyone recommend any programs or sites to run multiple OS's on paritions or
seperate HD's?

Is there a good knowledge base about doing this? What and how to?

Can a person put an OS onto an external drive and run it? I would assume
yes. How sucessful is a different story though.

Apparently there are two boot-ups or something? I was told about this at
work by someone. Does the start-up when you turn on your computer just take
longer?

Can you run them at the same time and switch between them with ease? Or do
you need to shut-down and log-in on the other?
 
install virtual pc or virtual box

then install as many o.s.'s as
you want in one of the above.

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Brian V said:
Anyone recommend any programs or sites to run multiple OS's on
paritions or seperate HD's?
Click to expand...

How your computer operates is entirely up to you, unless you're willing to
pay Billy billions and billions to do your thinking for you.

If you're willing (and able, of course) to do your own "thingking" then
there are nultiple online resources that will help you learn whatever it is
you desire. Use any of the common search engines to help you better define
your generic request, then drill down to "master boot record" or "grub" or
"lilo".
 
If your hobby is to run multiple Operating systems without doing any
meaningful work on your machine then YES it is possible to run the following
on the same machine provided to install them on a separate partition:

Dos 6.22 & Windows 3.10/3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98/98SE
Windows NT 4 (avoid NT 3.51)
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7

Just create a 5 gb of partition for each OS and you can run all of them from
the same machine. You normally get a boot menu where you select the OS you
would like to run at any one time.

hth



Windows
 
Brian V said:
Can a person put an OS onto an external drive and run it? I would assume
yes. How sucessful is a different story though.
Click to expand...

There are some people who have claimed to have installed Windows on an
external disk - most received wisdom says it can't be done.
You can certainly install and run certain other OSs from an external disk...
 
Gordon said:
There are some people who have claimed to have installed Windows on an
external disk - most received wisdom says it can't be done.
Click to expand...

Received wisdom is often inaccurate.

Although people have had success installing Windows on an external hard
drive (the possibility is determined by the motherboard and BIOS) --
even a USB flash drive! -- I wouldn't recommend doing this unless an
eSATA drive (which for all intents and purposes is treated like an
internal drive) is used.
 
Received wisdom is often inaccurate.
Click to expand...


Daave said:
Although people have had success installing Windows on an external hard
drive (the possibility is determined by the motherboard and BIOS) -- even
a USB flash drive! -- I wouldn't recommend doing this unless an eSATA
drive (which for all intents and purposes is treated like an internal
drive) is used.
Click to expand...


Gentlemen:
You might be interested in learning that the latest version 6 of the Casper
disk-cloning program now provides boot capability when the cloned contents
of a bootable XP OS reside on a USB external HDD. So that a user can boot
directly to the external USB device in the same way he or she would boot to
their internal HDD (or external eSATA HDD). Incidentally, the Casper 6
program provides that same capability with Windows 7. The motherboard's BIOS
must support this capability, i.e., permitting a boot from a USB device;
most motherboards manufactured over the past half-dozen years or so
generally provide this capability although many of the older motherboards do
not.

It *is* true, of course, that this is not the same as fresh-installing the
XP OS onto a USBEHD; that capability (as a routine operation) continues to
elude us notwithstanding user comments to the contrary. But having a
complete backup of one's system on a USB external HDD and providing the user
with a bootable system from an external device is a significant advantage.
Anna
 
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