OT Dual-Boot of Win7 and XP

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Best of both worlds for me!

Love Windows 7...but had to keep XP as a couple of work programs don't work with W7 (even in compatibility mode)

So, set up a dual boot on seperate Hard Drives....really impressed..and now off to compare W7 and XP in BHaH

[Von Paulus 8]

Agreed. There are still apps and games which run better in XP.

With 2 hardisks you can put the pagefile in the other HD which isn't running your OS you chose.

The ideal is 3. One for OS, other for Game, other for pagefile.

[FastCargo 412]

I've been running a tri-boot for a while...Win7 64, Vista 32, XP MCE 2005. Slowly migrating my programs from Vista to Win7. XP is for legacy programs.

 

FC

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Agreed. There are still apps and games which run better in XP.

With 2 hardisks you can put the pagefile in the other HD which isn't running your OS you chose.

The ideal is 3. One for OS, other for Game, other for pagefile.

 

Hi Von Paulus

 

I have actually got 3 drives in (one just for data)

Can you advise on moving the pagefile please?

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

In XP, moving the page file is fairly simple: Open control panel, click on system. Click tab labeled "advanced." Under section labeled "performance," click "settings." Of the three tabs show, click "advanced." You will see a section titled "virtual memory." Click on "change" to open the virtual memory box. There, you should see all of your physical hard drives along with their partitions listed. Choose the drive and partition you want to put your page file on, select either custom sized or system managed, and then set. Make sure you only have the page file set to only one partition. Then reboot.

 

Do NOT choose the button for no paging file or you will have performance problems (woof, woof)!

[Von Paulus 8]

The instructions given by Herr PW are correct. For Vista or Win7 it's not much different.

 

My C drive has XP, D has OFF, E has Win7.

I put XP pagefile in E. Win7 pagefile I allocate it to C.

To do this you've first to turn off pagefiles in both Operative Systems and reboot each time.

To obtain best performance you should defrag your HD's after turning off the pagefiles.

Why? Because if the HD is defragmented you'll assure that when you create the pagefile it won't be fragmented.

So after defragmenting you can then set your pagefiles. Use custom sized, with the min and max value set with the same value, instead system managed; this way it will prevent from later have pagefile fragmented and scattered along the HD.

In my case with 4GB memory I set man and min value 3071. Usually it's 1,5 times the value of the installed RAM, but I use 3071 because both my XP and Win7 are 32bit.

 

http://mintywhite.co...physical-drive/

http://www.pctipsbox...your-page-file/

http://www.petri.co....ptimization.htm

 

A good program to Defragment your hardisk is Ultimate Defrag.

With this Defragger you can fully customized which folders will be allocated in the faster access areas of you HDs.

I advised to read the documentation inside Ultimate Defrag; it will give you a good idea of how the things work inside a HD and which strategies serve you better, according to the use you give to your computer.

Here is the download link for the public domain. I prefer Ultimate Defrag 2008 but this one will serve you well and it's free.

http://jayaprakashkv...functional.html

 

Now you can pay me a drink.

 

P.S. I know my English is not the best, if there is anything that isn't clear to you, I'll try to rephrase it then.

Edited December 18, 2009 by Von Paulus

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

No worries about your English. More understandable than most of the "native-speakers" I run into here in the USA!

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Many thanks Gents!..Am going to follow your advice!