2 Operating systems on 1 PC possible?
 

I have winblows XP on my PC. Is it ok to install a different OS but on a separate drive? I want to try it out before byuing another PC or reformating this one.

yes just get a program called partition magic

i believe so.

Yes it is possible. I have Win XP Pro and Win 2000 Pro loaded on separate drives. At startup, you have a screen that allows you to choose which OS to boot.

Awsome, do you use this "partition magic" mentioned above?

You can install a different OS on a different drive but if that's the ONLY OS you install on the drive, you might have trouble transferring info between the drives. You are better off switching between OS at bootup.

Use Virtual PC from Microsoft, it works great. I was really impressed at how easy it was to install Windows Server or Linux on my WinXP Machine and run them at the same time. Really cool stuff.

Yes - it's very possible :)

Don't try to simply install the new OS on another drive - it will break windows completely.

You can do dual-boot with other windows or even linux OS, or, run a virtual OS software progam that lets you run multiple OS's at the same time.

I like VMWare the best: www.vmware.com

With VMWare, you can have virtual NIC cards so you can browse the web, run a website, etc, without adding extra physical network cards to your box. VMWare really does it all.

A bunch of dual-boot links: http://windows.about.com/cs/dualboot/

Yea I was going to suggest VMWare too, works good, I used it with Linux

I've never tried this. I always assumed it only handled Micro$oft OS's. It's cool that you can run *nix with it as well.

I didnt use Partition Magic this time. XP noticed that I was trying to add another Windows OS and took care of the boot sector for me.

I should of asked what OS you wanted to test. If it is just for trying your hand at linux and you don't care of which variant you use, there are some versions that will run from a CD.

Same here,,just get that 2nd drive

Well, Im having a little trouble. 1st off the CD version is simply not fucntioning for me for some reason.

So are you all saying that I cant install Linux OS on another drive without some tool or extension? So windows will not recognize and ask me at startup? And why would it destroy windows as fusionx mentioned above? Dang, I didnt think its this complicated.

^^ Bump for a little help

You will probably want a linux variant that is suited for guided installs - maybe Mandrake? It may recognize that you have Win XP installed and accomodate for it in the boot loader.

Warning: I havent installed linux on a desktop system with XP - only Win2k and XP. I did have Redhat and Win2k working.

Installing a new OS, even on a different drive, will overwrite the boot partition on your boot drive.

If you do this, be prepared to setup the boot loader software that comes/installs with your version of Linux. You will need to finish the Linux install, then use the boot loader config to add your original windows boot details. Once that's done, when you boot your box, you'll get a little menu asking you which OS to run.

I would highly recommend using a multi-OS software as discussed above. Run the new OS at the same time as the original. There's almost zero chance of hurting anything, and once you are done testing the new OS, you can delete it instantly.

do you know anything about computers? :helpme

Ya easy just install Fedora or Mandrake Linux on the second drive and you'll be up and running in no time!!!

Yeah, you can go about this multiple ways. If you take your old harddrive out while testing the new OS its 100% safe, or you can keep both and load a bootloader that will allow you to choose between them both at startup (although sometimes this can go wrong). Other options include emulating another PC in VMWare or Virtual PC on windows. Personally I'd just swap the drives around if I was really concerned about data on my existing harddrives, but the bootloader option can be convenient (just my :2 cents: )