To dual boot a computer, you'll want different os's placed on different hard drives or partitions. This is the way Boot Camp manages Windows and OS X with an Apple Mac. The disadvantages of dual booting are twofold.
First, when the boot sector or boot menu of the computer changes, you may lose use of one of the os's, because Startup Repair may not rebuild entries correctly for non-Windows os's, and people os's is probably not able to write towards the Windows boot loader.
Second, if you wish to switch from one operating system to a different, you need to close all your programs, turn off the equipment, and then restart it.
Virtualization enables you to run different os's alongside on your Windows desktop or full screen and makes it simple to change together. Furthermore, you've still got only one operating system in your Windows boot loader.
Also, VMs are extremely simple to support. They're just files (imagine a really large zip file) that could be copied from one spot to another once the VM isn't running. This will make them considerably better to support and restore than os's placed on another hard disk or partition.
While you can dual boot between Windows along with other os's, for example Linux, you will find limitations on the order in which you can install these os's. The reason being Microsoft changed the boot loader with Windows Vista to make it much more secure.
A number of other os's make use of a different, older type of boot loader. What this means is Windows 7 ought to always be the final operating system you put in because, even though it can incorporate another operating boot loaders into itself, not every os's can incorporate the Windows 7 boot loader into themselves. Windows 7 wouldn't have the ability to start if your non-Windows 7 boot loader has overwritten the Windows 7 boot loader.
Virtualization gets for this problem by running all of the os's from inside Windows 7. You can install every other version of Windows or Linux using Windows Virtual PC. Apple Mac OS X isn't supported, but you can get third-party virtualization packages for example VirtualBox and VMWare, which might support a wider selection of os's.
Virtualization offers significant benefits, one which is booting right into a virtual copy of Windows 7 to maintain your main copy clean, protected, and running efficiently. Two other advantages of virtualization are software and hardware compatibility. You might, for example, prefer to make use of an older printer or scanner that isn't supported with Windows 7 drivers.
If there's no problem using the hardware, you could utilize virtualization to set up an early on operating system with drivers that offer the hardware and install the hardware into that virtualized operating system instead.
Similarly, you may require utilization of software that won't run in Windows 7, perhaps a Linux application that won't run even in Windows XP Mode. You can use virtualization to produce safe test computers into which you can install and test new software, updates, security updates, and hardware. This really is becoming common practice in environments where system administrators need to know what impact an update or new software package may have on the organization's PCs.
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05122011
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