Dual boot on a laptop which already has XP

bignickel

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bignickel
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I have a laptop that came with XP Home Edition. I'm going to be testing and experimenting with Active Directory and GPO's, so I wish to put Server 2003 as a dual boot on the machine.

I've been going through the internet, but can't find anyone who's done or tried to do this; most pages have people trying to install something with Vista or 98 already installed.

Any good tips, or page you can point me to? I figure I might have to move the disk partition so I can give 2003 it's own private space...

(I've tried MS Virtual Server: won't install on Home Edition. I've looked into VMWare: it demands a server as it's host)
 
Every reference I've seen has always emphasized that if you want to dual boot two different versions of Windows you always need to install the older one first. I'm not exactly sure why this is.
 
shadron said:
Every reference I've seen has always emphasized that if you want to dual boot two different versions of Windows you always need to install the older one first. I'm not exactly sure why this is.
Click to expand...

So there shouldn't be any problems... XP predates Server 2003 by two years...
 
I think I should be able to use a partition program to move the partition, and then install server 2k3 in the newly created area. I'm hoping that I'll get the traditional "which do you wish to boot, server 2k3 or an older windows" that used to be de rigeur back in the 90's.
 
shadron said:
Every reference I've seen has always emphasized that if you want to dual boot two different versions of Windows you always need to install the older one first. I'm not exactly sure why this is.
Click to expand...

EDIT: Never mind, misunderstood.
 
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I would suggest you use VMWare's freeware virtual server stuff, or someone else's... I dual-boot at home, and it works fine, but frankly using a VM for testing is a lot cleaner for something temporary. :)
 
bignickel said:
(I've tried MS Virtual Server: won't install on Home Edition. I've looked into VMWare: it demands a server as it's host)
Click to expand...
If you can name the VMWare product I need to run on my XP Home Edition machine, please let me know. You can PM me the address to the download, if you'd like.

From the VMware dox, VMWare Server only runs on Win Server OS's.
 
IIRC, there should be no issues dual-booting Server 2003, if the older XP is already on it. Just make sure you have a partition for it.
Yes, it should give you a nice boot menu, which can be configured within Server 2003.

I have also used VMs, mostly Microsoft's Virutal PC. I find that hardware drivers are sometimes an issue with that, and sometimes (depending on the age and power of the machine) performance can be an issue, as well.

But, VMs are less threatening to your partitions and boot sectors. So, it might be safer, if you are paranoid of such things.

VMs are also more modular: You can pluck 'em out of one machine, and move 'em onto another: Something very difficult with multi-boot OS's. Don't know if that is useful.

(Of course, it should go without saying that you should back up your hard drive, before doing anything. I only mention it, because there are always a small number of folks who don't bother, and many of them are now miserable.)
 
I would love to use a VM, but I'll need someone to tell me which one.

I might go ahead with this, or just install it on a VM on my Vista desktop, or on a VM on a 2K machine I could build. I think it MS Virtual Server can run on 2K Pro.
 
VMWare Server is free and will work on any flavour of Windows, pretty much, as well as Linux. If you have recent hardware, you can even run a 64-bit virtual machine from a 32-bit host.

Downside is that the virtual machine can't have as much memory as the host; set the VM's memory too high and your whole machine becomes unresponsive. VMWare shows you the recommended values, though.

I run it at work all the time on Windows XP Pro.
 
Huh. That's odd, the dox on their website said it would only run on a Server OS. I'll give it a try.

From the Server Admin Manual:
Windows Host Operating System Requirements
You must use a Microsoft Windows server operating system.
 
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The Microsoft virtual machine - forget the name - is also free. I haven't tried it myself; I've been told, though, that the files that store the virtual disks must be fully allocated (that is, if you configure it as an 8GB disk, it'll be 8GB in size). The VMWare disks aren't like that (although you can have it fully allocated if you want).
 
Holy cow, the VM server runs just fine on XP Home Edition. Installing 2003 Server now.

Here's a thought: I was going to run XP Pro on a different laptop, and have them both communicate via hub. I wonder: can you have 2 VMs running at the same time, and give them both faux-network adapters so they can both talk with each other... on the same laptop?

(I'm curious, but due to the really low amount of memory I have on the laptop, the performance of such a beast would be abysmal)
 
Yes, that's theoretically possible. I don't know for sure what would happen if you used NAT networking for the VMs' connections; I suspect they might have issues talking to each other. However, if your physical network allows it you can use what VMWare calls bridged networking. In that case, all VMs are machines on the network and for all intents and purposes are indistinguishable from physical machines. Thus, they could talk to each other, as well as any other physical machines on the network.

(Note: If you have a standard consumer-grade router on the network assigning IP addresses [running a DHCP server] then your network supports bridged networking.)

VMWare Workstation - which is not free - has the capability of setting up entire virtual networks, including the speed and reliability of each link in the network.
 
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