is it possible to run windows xp on a small portion of my hard drive?

[khanster786]

Is there any possible way to run xp on a small portion of my hard drive because I have a few things that I have been trying to use on my lappy but it doesnt support vista is this possible?

 

[Yami]

Yes, you can use a partitioner such as Partition Magic 8, to shrink the size of your Vista partition (that's the word for 'portion of your hard drive'); then you can install XP on the new space.

 

[SuxoR]

It's entirely possible and works great :]

I made a smaller partition of my hard drive and am running Windows 7 on it (using it now)
You can have your computer dual boot so you can pick which OS at start up. The program I used was GParted and is very easy to use with a great GUI

You can download it here, make sure you have an extra blank cd around because you have to boot from disc to run it!

GParted

 

[khanster786]

roughly how much space would i need to run xp or a different operating system on my comp? and how should i go about doing all of this

 

[Lexluethar]

I use Gparted too.
-First go to that site and download GParted
-Then burn that program as a .ISO file so that your system can read it at startup
-Put the CD into the CD drive and restart the computer (it should ask you too press any key to boot from CD, if it doesn't and just starts going back into XP you'll have to go into your BIOS and select your CD drive as the first boot option)
-Select the option you (i believe it is the first one) want then resize the one drive to however many smaller drives you want
-Vista requires 20 gig empty space to install, XP requires i think like 4 gig, and Linux Ubuntu can run on like 5 gig
-Pop in your new OS CD and install on the empty partitions

 

[KSoD]

roughly how much space would i need to run xp or a different operating system on my comp? and how should i go about doing all of this

You would need at least 2GB for the install of XP. If you plan on running ANY software at all you might want to look to increase that amount.

 

[SuxoR]

Yeah you'll need your basic programs installed again and some optional software if you wanna do comparisons on how they run and things of that sort.

Most of the time you can share your media between the partitions which is nice

 

[khanster786]

only reason i am planning on doing this is because its a pain in the but when i have things i can run my comp because it isnt compatible but is xp compatible grrr

 

[Lexluethar]

So the programs you are running aren't compatible with Vista? You can run those programs in compatability mode so that they can run in an XP environment within Vista.

Say you install X application and it isn't Vista compatible. Install it anyways, then go to start, programs, then right click on the program icon and go to properties. Then click the compatability tab and select to 'run this program in compatibility mode' then select the OS that supports that application.

 

[Harper]

Yes, you can use a partitioner such as Partition Magic 8, to shrink the size of your Vista partition (that's the word for 'portion of your hard drive'); then you can install XP on the new space.

The problem with partition magic is that it does not work so well under Windows Vista.