Is Dual-Booting worth it?
 

I was thinking about dual-booting Windows 2000 with my XP MCE OS, but I don't see any benefits of doing it besides resource management for games. Win2k uses less resources and would run games better, right? Most people here seem to dual-boot a version of Windows with a non-Windows, but unfortunately I don't have Linux, or Solaris, etc. Compared to you guys I'm probably just a casual user who doesn't need an OS like Linux.

Because I have the capability to do so now, I was wondering if it's worth it to dual-boot XP MCE with another version of Windows. I have Windows 98, 98SE, 2000, and XP Pro (old version).

Dual-Booting two NT5 Operating Systems seems redundant to me. But in most other situations (Dual-Booting Multiple UNIX variants or Windows and a UNIX variant), it's invaluable. I use Linux 99% of the time and when I feel like gaming I usually boot into Windows.

I had Windows 2000 on my old PC, it always ran perfect, never crashed or gave me any major errors that forced a reinstallation. My new PC came with Windows MCE already on it, and the funny thing is I've had to reinstall it three times already in less than a month. It came out the box with problems I had to fix. :cussing: Windows Media Center has got to be the most sensitive OS there is, but I really enjoy using it. If I were to dual-boot Windows 2000 I probably would never use it unless I planned on playing games all day, or had a critical problem with MCE.

If you do dual boot, make sure only one OS tweaks the DST settings, otherwise they'll cancel eachother out. If you have a 2GHz+ CPU, I'd suggest using VMWare instead, as it lets you run multiple OSes at the same time and without modifing your current filesystem.

Earlier today I tried dual-booting by installing Windows 2000 on my other drive. I've been unsuccessful for the most part.

1. Installed Windows 2000 on D:\ [MCE on C:\].
- WinMCE broke. Only gave a Win2k error message.
2. Reinstalled Windows MCE on C:\ [2k still on D:\].
3. Added Win2k to boot.ini [D:\="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional"]
- Both systems ran when I tested them.
4. Reinstalled all my programs and updates on MCE.
- Win2k broke. Now it restarts my PC when I chose it from the boot menu.

EDIT: Nevermind I fixed it. Everything is working fine now.

For future reference, ALWAYS install the oldest OS first (on the C: Partition) and the newer OS second (putting it on the D: Partition). This lets the newer OS set up a dual boot, when done the other way around, the older OS usually won't recognize the newer OS and destroy important boot files and information.

Unless you're doing what Arainach is doing and using Linux as your primary OS and gaming with Windows (Linux hates your hardware anyway) then dual-booting is dumb.

Oh, and if you just want to play around with an alternate OS in general; like if you're not quite sure you want to use Linux.

I can't stand using Linux most of the time, so I have it on a totally separate computer where it just sits around all day and runs a fileserver.

I read about how you should always install the older OS first, so I wasn't supprised when MCE broke. I hate having to reinstall an OS but this was worth it, finally everything is working the way I want it. Theres still some problems with finding drivers for 2000, but at least my games are working and I have the internet on it. Windows 2000 uses about a 3rd of the resources MCE does so I was able to test run World of Warcraft at maxed settings. Now I'm thinking about trying this VMWare Virtual Machine. Does it hog alot of resources to swap OSs without rebooting? Like if I'm running MCE then decide to get on 2000 to play a game, will MCE still be running in the background?


By the way, to get Windows 2000 working again I had to edit the boot.ini file(s). It took me several tries before I found the right string.
-------------
[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
timeout=5
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Media Center Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
-------------

Just be lucky you wern't installing Windows 95/98/ME, they use a different filesystem altogether (and also handle FAT and FAT 32 bootsectors differently than Windows NT based OSes do) and would require you to reformat the primary partition and reinstall any newer OSes (so they wouldn't destroy the ability to boot into Windows 9x).

Dunno what you're smoking. Linux loves my hardware.

Not really. I used Linux as my Exclusive OS for a few years. Played HL2, CS:S, CoD, and all my games just fine. Mild (about 20% I'd say) performance loss, but still quite playable. I went back to a dual boot because there were a few proprietary apps I had to use for a semester or two that I couldn't get running in WINE, and during that time I just started using my Windows partition for gaming.

A question, is it allowed have both Winxp 32bit and Winxp 64bit on the same partition as a dualboot setup? Or would it not work becase of them updating the same bunch of files in c:\Program Files or wherever with incompatible versions?

Do you mean the same partition or the same drive? I'd never risk dual-booting ANY two versions of Windows, much less x86_32 and x86_64 , on the same partition. I'd do 3 partitions - One for the Windows 32 Installation, one for the Windows 64 Installation, one for all your programs.

If you're going to the trouble to have a 32bit Windows OS and a 64bit Windows OS, use Windows 98SE and WinXP 64bit. 99% of all the 32bit programs Win98SE can't run can be ran on WinXP 64bit (it can run most 32bit programs not designed to use any pre-Win9x/WinNT code); this is much different on 64bit Windows, where any program that isn't 100% 32bit or 64bit will not run at all on any 64bit Windows OS (this includes 32bit programs that use a legacy 16bit installer). In fact if most of my games break when I (a long ways off if at all) use Windows Vista, I'll give Windows 98 SE a try.

Same partition. I only have 3, and only 1 of them is reserved for OS. And I really don't want to repartition the drive.

Perhaps its time to invest in a new HD.

Just buy a 320GB HDD, they're only ~$150-160 on Newegg right now. For the immense space, that's a great deal.

I was under the impression that Windows XP Media Center Edition is Windows XP Professional...

Not really. It's missing a lot of key features. For instance, MCE can't authenticate to a domain, period.

They have different focus. WinXP pro is mainly for professional workstation (and power user) PCs. Media center is for soccer moms that want to show off their digital photos on their 50" plasma.

Best description ever.

I've used that OS. It's abysmal at what it does. Why hasn't MS bad some kind of awesome media server of some sort, anyway.

I dual-boot, after a fashion. Initially I did this to test out Windows XP64 because it has a lot of potential benefits for my work. It's also nice to have a "backup" system should the worst happen and my main Windows 2000 OS becomes corrupted. Since I haven't installed or run XP on any of my own machines until this year, I was cautious and made sure to install it on a spare HDD. Although it's more cumbersome, I select which OS to boot into by altering the boot-priority in the BIOS. It doesn't bother me to do it this way, and I prefer it that the two OSs remain completely independant from one another. Eventually when I can afford it, i'll install my main apps onto the XP installation, and then ghost it onto a Raptor X or something similarly fast (the current drive it's on is painfully slow).

One recent innovation that will please many multiple OS users is the fatc that bleeding edge Intel processors (and upcoming AMDs) will support Virtualization, which lets you run each OS in a seperate core (up to the point that you have more OSes running than cores, upon which it would probably share cores) even lets you run 64bit and 32bit OSes side by side. Certainly gives old fashioned dual booting a kick in the ass.

Actually, it doesn't mean shit. CPU power has NEVER been the issue. It's access and control over hardware that prevents you from effectively running simultaneous OSes.

Well 32bit and 64bit OSes cannot be ran on the same core (without emulation), and the hardware sharing issue could be solved: