I was wondering, if I dual-booted Vista and XP (my computer is pre-installed with Vista) would I have to re-install all of the software I have onto XP as well or would XP be able to - I don't know the technical term - but somehow borrow the programs from Vista without me having to install the programs twice. So basically, will XP recognize the pre-installed software and be able to use it? Also I have 2 100GB partitions on my laptop HD, so does it matter if I install XP on the same partition as Vista? And one last question - hypothetically speaking, say my first hard drive was to completely fill up, would extra added data be automatically put on the second partition - meaning the 2 partitions are connected, or am I only allowed to use one at a time?

Sorry if the questions are hard to understand, any answers are appreciated.
thanks

Hi davidf welcome to the forum

1. you will have to install all the programs in Vista and XP
2. you will need a seperate partition to install XP so you will need to install it on the second partiton
3.The data will not be added to the second partiton automaticly


Hope this helps. By the way I don't know if your aware of this Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 it maybe a better option if your PC is powerfull this is the way I run XP in Vista

Funny thing, I just finished downloading Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 after reading about it a while ago. I have a 200GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM on a brand new notebook - would this be enough to run XP?

It should run fine when you set it up allocate at least 512MB memory for it. Should run fine

Just another thought, would this Virtual PC work with Ubuntu Linux or only Microsoft products?

There is and Microsoft version and a MAC version I don't know about Linux never tried it and I don't use it so I'm not sure.

Virtual PC does work with Ubuntu, but it has so many errors that you are better off installing Ubuntu on a new partition or hard drive.

Also, you can execue programs installed on another OS, but since it can't read the registry files in the other OS, they will be very shoddy and your personal settings are likely to not be there.