Hey, everyone. This is Will from beyourownit.com. And I am going to show you how to set up a dual boot system with Windows XP and Windows 7. This video is going to be quite long. Hopefully, I can get it all in one YouTube session, but I’m going to be pausing the video a lot between times when we’re waiting for the install to complete or a section of it to complete.

So, when you’re going to install two different versions of an operating system or anything for that matter, Windows needs to be installed first when you’re working with like a Linux system just because it’s a little harder to get Windows to boot to a Linux system than it is to get Linux to boot to a Windows system. However, that’s not what we’re here for this video for.

When you’re working with two different copies of Windows, you need to put in the older one first. So, in this case I’m going to insert the XP disc.

I set up a new virtual machine here called Dual Boot, gave it a bunch of memory, some other processors, set up some video memory, gave it like a 60 gig hard drive.

You are probably going to have more, but just for the purpose of this demonstration this will work fine. So, I’m going to start this guy up. And we’re going to boot here to the Windows CD. Now, it’s going to go through some stuff about loading itself, and I’m going to pause the video and unpause when we get to the selection screen.

All right. After a couple minutes of loading some files, we’re going to get to this screen. We’re going to hit enter. Now, we’re going to set up Windows XP. We’re going to agree with the license agreement. We have unpartitioned space. Some people like to have a third partition, or they can share data between the two part, the two installations, and other people just like to put a folder on the root of each drive.

In this case, we’re just going to go with the two partition scheme. So, I’m actually going to do a C, and when I create a partition that’s 20, 000 megabytes or about 20, 000 gigs. Now, with that said, with your hard drives you’re going to be using a lot more, possibly a lot less.

XP needs a couple gigs to install, and you allow your smaller programs in. The more stuff you put in it the larger it’s going to be. Anyhow, we’ll go with the traditional one. Format it in NTFS.

The reason why, and just a little bit ago I said you install the older operating system first. The reason we install the older operating system first is because when you go to install seven or if you’re putting in Vista, the newer operating system can always detect the older operating system, but the reverse is not true. So if you installed Vista and then you installed XP or you installed seven and then you installed XP, you’re actually going to overwrite the boot file.

And it’s not going to be able to recognize the newer operating system whereas if you install XP you install seven overwrites the boot files for XP, and it says, well, XP is here. And it makes a note of it and it lists it with it. So that’s why you go about doing that.

There are ways to try and repair that information and repair those boot files. Sometimes they work, and sometimes you accidentally delete your partition tables that are using them. This is really the easiest and most direct way to do this. I’m going to let the Windows set up copy this and restart. I’m going to pause the video again, and when it’s done I will unpause the video.

All right. We’re back. You see that the Windows XP setup is finished, and we’re going to restart the computer, in this case, the virtual machine, and we’re not going to boot from CD. And we’re going to let the Windows XP setup begin.

Now, considering it’s just supposed to be a video on booting multiple operating systems, I could probably just skip the Windows XP setup, but in this case I’m going to try and cover the entire thing. It’ll sit here for awhile. It’s going to process. It’s going to install. This little timer will count down.

Eventually, it’s going to pop up with some options. And we’ll start the video back up as soon as those options appear.

All right. After setup, we come to the Windows XP directional setup popup here. It wants language regional options. If you’re U. S. or other North American customers, usually it’s going to be what you want. Otherwise, you can customize and change your options.

Then, you type in a name. You can type in the organization, if you want; computer name and then your password. In this case, this is just a demo. So I’m not going to type one in.

Make sure your clock is set to the correct time and date and change your times of the settings.

We’re going to go back into Windows setup a bit, and another option menu will pop up momentarily. You may pop up the networking menu here and the typical settings or group is usually fine. If you need to make it part of a new domain, you usually know about this in advance, or someone else is doing it.

After awhile, Windows setup finishes. The machine will reboot, and Windows will start. We’re going to go through a couple of configuration options right here, and we should be on the desktop.

For those of you who haven’t heard these sounds before, this is what happens when Windows XP actually supports your sound card out of the box. I know most of the newer PCs that you install Windows XP on, you won’t hear anything right about now. You can skip that part. You’ll be configuring it later.

And the Windows XP install is complete. Now, you have to go through and most likely install some drivers, install your software, get all that working.

But as far as the dual boot goes, I’m actually going to split these videos up, and I want to cover all the Windows seven installation and setting up for dual boot in the next video. So, this has been Dual Boot Part 1, and I’m Will from beyourownit.com. You can drop us a line here on YouTube and ask for additional videos. Is there a specific topic that you want me to make a video on?

You can also stop by our forums at beyourownit.com/forum. You can drop the same line there. You can say I want this kind of video. You can also request help for any PC trouble you may be having, and our community and myself will try to help you out. You can also help our community members who are also having problems.

We also carry a full line of PC training videos at our beyourownit.com.com/store. We have tool kits. There’s many things in the store, so beyourownit.com/store here you can locate those.

I’m Will. Hope to see you on the forums, and I’ll be putting up video number two tomorrow.

Thanks for watching.

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