I am assisting a client with a new computer setup. The software he uses runs in Windows XP and the developer says it will not run in Windows 7. I am hoping it may run in XP Compatibility Mode but if not I will need to load XP on to the new system. If this is the case I am thinking of making it Dual Boot. My questions are:
Is there anything special I need to do when I install the program?
If I need to do a dual boot I have read that I need to install XP first then reinstall 7. I found information where after shrinking the volume, creating a simple volume, installing XP on it you then create a boot loader. Here is the link.
howtogeek.com What do you think?
Is there any reason if I can't run the program in Win 7 that I only have the computer run XP, they want to replace their XP machine. It is for a doctors office and they use limited applications.
If I need to install XP I am planning on using their license from their old machine then recycle their old computer. Is there any problem with this since they already own the XP license? It seems to me that XP is very forgiving and reinstallable on a new machine.
If you must use a dedicated hardware boot for XP, I'd recommend a good 3rd party boot manager like Boot-It BM that completely isolates the two OS's. Using two different disks (as suggested above) is a reasonable degree of isolation (better than the XP or '7 managers), but the OS's can still "see" each other; with Boot-It they're completely isolated and do can't even "see" each other. They can be on the same disk, or different disks -- doesn't matter. For example, my main system has 8 different bootable OS's (all on the same physical disk). I'll attach the boot menu so you can see how simple it is at boot time to choose the OS.