On a new laptop with Vista Business, there is a need for XP Pro to run certain corporate applications. The HD has plenty of space to carve out a separate partition, and XP drivers are available for everything on the laptop, so we're OK there.

Installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or Parallels (I noticed on Slickdeals it's now available free) would be simpler - no need to modify the Vista bootloader or risk serious corruption.

OTOH, this is a new laptop with nothing really saved on it, and both a recovery partition with HD image on it and a Vista DVD. And it might be fun to play.

So are there reasons I might prefer virtualization over dual-boot or vice versa? Performance? Compatibility? Other issues I'm not currently aware of?


Edited to add:
A minor question: also purchased was a Norton AV 2009 for up to 3 computers. Does anybody know if installation of the program on a second partition of the same computer would use a second of the NAV licenses? Couldn't find an answer on Symantec's website.

Benefit: virtual lets you run both at the same time, while with dual boot you boot back and forth.

Cost: virtual always costs more (sometimes a lot more, sometimes a little more). Whether that is a performance difference that matters to you depends on your config and apps. Also a very few "not quite legal" apps -- like the ones that won't port from XP to Vista -- also fail under virtual. So your apps may or may not work right in virtual.

Bottom line: dual boot is safer (you effectively have 2 separate systems). Virtual is more convenient but does not work 100% and degrades performance between 1% and 90% (usually pretty good performance but worst case can be gruesome).

I'd do virtual unless the app doesn't work that way. The need to reboot to switch to that app would annoy me to no end. I rarely reboot as it is so something that makes that more frequent is bad in my book.

The other thing to consider/try is that there is an option to run apps in compatibility mode. If that works it is way easier than actually maintaining the second OS instance, though it certainly does not always work. Just right click on the shortcut, choose the compatibility tab and see if those options work for the app.

This is very, very, very rare with a virtual machine unless you are talking about something that needs advanced access to something like the graphics subsystem. I have found games that would not run on an XP virtual machine, but I have yet to find a business app that wouldn't. YMMV - but I'd guess the OP is pretty safe with the expectation that running a virtual machine will be fine.

Personally, I like to use the virtual machine in reverse manner. Have XP installed as the primary OS, and only deal with Vista when I need to @:-)

I tried to install Parallel workstations on a Vista box running home premium and the program refused to install saying it was not compatible.

Remember that the OP mentioned that this is for a laptop, so downgrading to Vista might mean a serious search for XP compatible drivers and such.

Obviously, this wouldn't be an issue in a virtualized XP environment.

If you can tell us, what kind of business app is it that isn't running under Vista?

The free parallels, I tHINK was only for xp 32bit, and possibly vista 32. Your new vista business might be 64 bit only.

If you do the virtual, get your RAM up to the max if you can, it really makes it worth it.

And, if the apps are XP Pro compliant, won't they run in the vista safety environment?

Answers to questions (asked or not):

1) The laptop is a Dell Latitude E5400, with a Core 2 Duo P8400, 4 Gb RAM, 160 Gb 7200 RPM HD, Vista Business 32-bit. I gave it as a gift to my daughter. She wanted Vista (bored with XP?). I've enjoyed playing with it - it's fast, light, and gets 5-6 hours from the 6-cell battery (she didn't want the 9-cell, too heavy).

2) The applications requiring XP are a) a Cisco VPN client, b) an in-house built FoxPro app that she must post to, and mostly c) a corporate IT group that requires XP in house, and this laptop will spend lots of time in house.

3) The Dell is sold with Vista or with XP Pro, and Dell has all the XP drivers on their website.

I downloaded and installed Parallels yesterday. Did not have any problems installing it. It did not, however, solve some of the problems with the Cisco VPN client. So we shrunk the Vista partition and went the dual boot route. Left the Parallels Workstation installed, as it might be useful.

Agreed. XP first, then Vista is the way to go. Much simpler, as you don't have to do a Vista repair to fix the Vista bootloader.

But never one to take the easy route, we left the Vista partition first and installed XP in the space freed by the Vista shrinking operation. What an experience! First, I got a BSOD at the Loading Windows stage of the install. Thinking it was a bad CD, I found another and got the same results. Researched it online to discover it needed drivers for the SATA HD. You know - press F6 at the beginning of the install to supply drivers for the disk. Only one problem - no floppy drive, and the F6 process requires a floppy.

More research revealed a freeware utility called nLite that allows you to add drivers, patches, even service packs to a Windows distro, creating an image file (ISO) which you then use to burn a new Windows CD. Used that for installing and had no problems.

Actually had fun - it was a lengthy project, completed from the living room couch while flipping between bowl games and Iron Chef America reruns.

You should be running x64 to take full advantage of having 4GB RAM in the laptop.

Probably. But we are getting close to 3.5 Gb recognized by the 32-bit. And we have so many more software options.

I have two virtual machines (MS Virtual PC) on my Vista laptop. On one of them, I use it to run MS Office and all my other XP applications.

On the other one, I use it for Internet browsing and general testing of new applications. When a deadly virus hits the virtual machine or I have installed/uninstalled too many applications, I simply delete the machine and create a new one. It's just about two hours of work versus a whole day to re-install all my applications plus the stress of possibly losing my data.

Or run it in replay mode and just roll back the changes and save the rebuild process time. It is a good approach but there are some issues that go with it, like issues with the clipboard, integrated applications that are in the base install and similar, but those can be worked around. And running in replay mode does have a minor additional performance hit.

The Cisco VPN client only runs on 32-bit XP and Vista. (V5.x for Vista).

I have no idea if it will work in a VM. I've never tried it. There's varying responses on that if you search for "cisco vpn client virtual machine". For future reference, I'd like to know if you can figure out how to make it work with a VM.

OP: Reading your post #8, it looks like your #2c is a good reason to go with dual-boot or just XP. I see you also tried the VPN client in the VM and it didn't work for you. You might be able to find other combinations/permutations/configurations of the VPN client in the host OS or other VMMs that might work. I don't know. Good luck with that, and let us know if you find a way to make it work. In theory, there should be a way to make it work in the host OS, with a virtual switch, and have the VM use the virtual switch, but again, I've never tried to make it work.

-David

Indeed, but that is the guest, not the host OS, which is what I was suggesting be run as x64.

I have the Cisco VPN client (v5.0.01.0600) running on Vista x86 just fine. I haven't tried it in my MS Virtual PC session. If the company doesn't officially support the newer version of the client you can try installing the new version anyways and grabbing the config file (it is a .pcf file in the profiles subfolder of the VPN client installation) and moving it over to the newer client version to see if that works. It doesn't help with the FoxPro app, but it might get you past the VPN issue.

Well, that's the thing. In my brief search it didn't look like it was trivial to get it to work inside a VM. But I've never tried it either.

I'd be interested to hear if it does work in a VM or how people with VMs get it to work.

-David