I can't believe I'm considering this, but yes - after a painless decade I'm thinking it's about time I upgrade my OS.

Now the thing is I'm still happy with 2K (SP4) - I have no hardware issues (at present) and can manage and maintain 2K with relative ease. But more and more often these days I'm coming up against troublesome and/or non-starter installs for applications & games that I really would like to play with.

So I'm thinking XP. Possibly XP 64. Both in their Pro guises becauses I "adminstrate" our house's LAN and have had no end of hassle with the Home editions. I would consider Vista / 7 if it weren't for a horrid fear that I'll see my modest hardware grind to a halt under their superfluous GUI. (I like how you can cut back XP's "cute" icons back to classic.

But the thing is, and perhaps I'm being needlessly cautious here, I'm thinking a dual-boot configuration - because, like I say, I've everything as I want it. I just know at some point I have to make this move..... And so I was wondering how dual-boots work. I mean, were I to buy a new HD - could I install XP on that; and choose to boot through whichever HD/OS combo I pleased - whilst retaining all my precious files on my storage HD? Would I even need a new HD? Do you have to run duplicated installs of your cross-OS programs? Or does it not work like that?

A lot of questions which will no doubt field a whole new bunch from you lot - but come on people talk me into it.

don't bother with xp64... you will have no end of problems



you can in vista too don;t know about 7



as far as i can remember: yes, no but it's less grief if you do and the same for programs

Does it have to be Windows? If not, I'd look at a linux solution if I was you.

If it has to be Windows, I'd go for Windows 7 if I were you, sheerly because it's supposed to be friendlier to less-powerful hardware and compatible with all things Vista (presumably this includes any drivers etc).

You could use two hard drives, if your BIOS lets you choose a boot device on startup (usually have to press something like F8) then you could use that to boot into each OS...Or the Windows boot loader could probably do the swapping for you.

A boot loader is a small program which gets booted first (instead of an OS) it then gives you some sort of menu where each item links to an installation of an OS.
One would usually use the same hard drive, though two can be used, I'm not sure how you would configure it under Windows (when you install Linux it usually does it for you).

One thing to consider also, is that you can trim Vista back to the Windows 'classic' skin, my friend gained an extra hour and a half battery life when he did that, so that may be worth considering...Though I'll let the more experienced comment more on that.

Hope that helps,
Ben

Could that be because you're a Linux user? Thanks but no thanks - I've had a look - it's not for me. I want things to work. Without fuss. And with ALL of the programs I use. Autodesk & Adobe do not like Linux - which means quite frankly, neither do I.

Sorry but I just can't go with "supposed" - I haven't the funds to put faith in a brand new product - and after the [LIFTED] that was Vista I would rather stick with something I know well (I've been using XP at work for years) but....

Is this you're own experience? I've installed it on two different machines now, and neither have ever had major problems - more often than not it's been down to the lack of support for the OS(rather than other way round) that has made some software installs irksome...
It's not the biggest selling point, but that's good to know - I just don't need all this visual clutter - I'm more interested in what I'm creating in the program....

(and before anyone gets smart, no that doesn't mean it's time for OSX and a new computer - that is definately not a financially viable proposal)


I can set boot options in my BIOS.

The XP installer (on top of 2000) does this for you - just read it.



Still undecided mind.

Undecided about completely upgrading Vs. Dual boot? Or undecided about Two hard drives Vs. One?

If it's the former, many new Linux users try dual booting for a while until they don't use Windows for hardly anything, and usually any last few bits can be done in a VM, at which point Windows can be deleted and Linux can take over the rest of the disk.
If you dual boot for a time you may find you're booting into Win2k less and less, at which point it makes sense to cut out Win2K altogether, if there are any last compatibility issues with XP you may potentially get away with a SM of Win2k?

If you have a spare partition or disk it may be worth downloading the RC of Windows 7 and trying it - no cost involved and if it doesn't work at least you know.

Hope this helps.

If the manufacturers of your hardware have Vista drivers, I would go with Vista (7 is still RC, so I wouldn't use it on a primary rig).

I switched to Vista when it came out. The first 6 months or so were pretty bad, but since December 2007 or so it is definintely a usability improvement over XP, IMHO. I still have to use XP at work and I hate it!

I used to use Windows 2000, the upgrade to XP drove me over to using Linux, Vista got me to come back to using Windows as my main OS.

If you need help running games and apps on Win2k, PM me.

I used 2k for aaaages, and eventually found out how to run Crysis and other games on it.

7 has the huge advantage that you can try it for free, and most people agree it's better than Vista. I've had very few problems with the Beta, so I expect the RC to be pretty solid. I have a separate partition with it on, using the Windows boot manager to choose between 7 or my existing OS.

If you want to put a new drive in, that's the easiest. When you boot from the 7 DVD it will talk you through installing 7 on the new drive and keeping your old OS.

Do backup any important stuff before you start. But then, you should always have backups anyway. Drives inevitably fail. Death and taxes...

That's exactly the reason why I'll be switching my dad from Win2000 to Windows 7 at the end of the year.

Well funnily enough yesterday added a new chapter to my (ever so slight) discontent with my computer - not a 2K issue - but storage - I've recently started ripping my DVD collection (using the oh so awesome Handbrake ) and what with having just completed a massive bout of ripping 900+ CD's, I'm down to about 400mb spare on my 500GB data drive.... so it's a new 1TB for me, everything moved over to that, then I'll regain the full capacity of the 500GB drive... so if the weather's crappy on the weekend, and since I've knackered my legs and won't be playing football for a week or so I might give this a go....

I still find XP to be the best of MS's OS's.

It's clean and simple, it can be dressed up or dressed down. 64bit I havn't tried personally, but the 32bit with SP3 is rather pleasing.

Vista is ok. I'm not a fan of it's "user safe screens" but they can easily be turned off.

I'm not so sure why I'm such a big fan of XP, probably because I used it alot before, when I used to use photoshop alot.