Dual boot XP on top of Windows 10

spapakons said:

VMware Player can be configured in "Unity Mode". This means that you won't need to see the Windows XP desktop, you only launch the desired application in a window, as it was running on the host. You can also add a shortcut for the application in start menu, so she won't notice anything confusing. She will be able to seamlessly use the XP application in Windows 7 or 10 as if she was running it directly on 7 or 10.

Hi there

You can also run it in EXCLUSIVE MODE (VMware) - this is different from Unity in that the user just sees the VM as the ONLY OS in full screen mode on the desktop -- this could be better if the user doesn't want the possible confusion of starting / stopping VM's and seeing the VM menus.

Cheers
jimbo

Haven't used Exclusive mode, so I cannot tell how seamless it is. I remember back in the 90's when we were starting a Windows virtual machine inside a Unix host, but this was done on demand from us. If it were automatic would be much better. Of course performance sucked for the hardware of the 90's.

I think I'll have to go this route because of an old capture card I wanna use and that only works with Edius 6. I've tried a VM of XP and it didn't work (Edius 6 got installed in the XP VM but the VM didn't see the card, neither in the device manager nor in Edius 6), just as the backwards compatibility mode in Windows 10. In Windows 10, I could only install Edius 8 and the semi-official legacy drivers for the card so it would show up in the Windows 10 device manager but Edius 8 was too new to actually communicate with the card. So that's while I'll need a dual boot.

So I'm wondering: Is there a way to circumvent all this hassle with broken boot procedures by either using EasyBCD right form the start, before actually installing XP on top of Windows 10? Or maybe even by simply installing XP on a new partition, rather than on C: itself? I've created a new one by shrinking my C:, and the new disk partition is now called K:. Would it help if I somehow tried to install XP to K: rather than C:?

cereberus said:

You would be better off installing a second drive, installing xp to that whilst other drive is disconnected and swap between OSs using selection of boot drive from OS. This way you do not get into a tangle with dual booting two OSs not designed to dual boot together.

I've had a look at EasyBCD by now and it looks like it was made to do exactly that: Make XP and newer versions live in peaceful co-existence on the same drive? In any case, that still sounds a lot easier to me than having to physically add and remove hard drives everytime just to switch between OSs.

cereberus said:

Note: We never advise putting XP on PC except in a VM due to security concerns as XP is basically now like swiss cheese in terms of security holes.

Oh, and as for XP security issues:

a.) All you really need are SP 3, the latest XP security patch dating May 2017, and possibly a virus scanner,

and b.) all I really need XP for is to use this one capture card to capture video. I don't even really need internet on it.

CountMike said:

XP and W10 are too far apart so I suggest you make every effort to set everything in XP so it doesn't recognize and see W10 disk. Even System restore from XP can make a mess of W10 if it's not turned off for that disk.

Well, I at least have a remote grasp of what spapakons has suggested. Anything else seems even more complicated to me. And as far as I got, EasyBCD will take care of all booting issues between XP and 10 for me. The question is just when to use it: From the start to avoid any hassle, or after having disabled XP and restored 10?

Okay, I've been convinced by somebody else now that it's much safer and easier to be installing Windows XP to an external disk that I'll only plug in when I wanna boot into it. And when my boot sequence will be borked, I'll continue in the way as described here.

TlatoSMD said:

Okay, I've been convinced by somebody else now that it's much safer and easier to be installing Windows XP to an external disk that I'll only plug in when I wanna boot into it. And when my boot sequence will be borked, I'll continue in the way as described here.

I have something similar to this installed in a 5.25" bay in the front of my desktop computer. It's a trayless, HDD/SSD rack, mine accepts either 3.5" Desktop drives or 2.5" Notebook drives. Makes booting and using non-installed drives easy.