₦airaland Forum

Friend here I am going to talk about "Dual Boot" in my ways, How I learnt and did.


Dual Boot means, you have Two Operating Systems in one Pc. You have to select which operating system to boot up with at Start Up.

Other option is to use a Virtual Machine. In this process, you will be able to run one operating system within the other one. The plus point of using virtual machine is, you can run both OS at the same time. But for this you need a powerful PC at last Dual Core or higher and 2 GB of RAM or higher.
Suppose you have Xp instead on your Pc and want to install Windows 7 on you present System volume without losing any files. Follow the steps below:

***Make sure that the CD/DVD drive is selected first in the boot order in the BIOS. Insert your Windows 7 boot disk and boot in command prompt mood.

*** Shrink The XP Volume( System Volume):
*Type "diskpart" on command prompt and Press Enter.
*Type "list volume" and press Enter to see the Partitions List.
*Type "select volume #" ( # = Volume number) and press Enter to select a volume.
*Type "shrink querymax" and press Enter.
*Now type the amount of MB you want to "Shrink desired=#" ( # = amount of MB) and Enter.
*Type "exit" and press Enter.
Note: 1024 MB = 1 GB, Windows 7 will need a minimum of 16 GB ( 16384 MB).

*** Now complete setup and restart your PC to have the option to boot from Earlier Version of Windows ( Windows Xp) or Windows 7.
If it is only booting Windows 7 automatically and do not show Windows Xp listed in the Windows Boot Manager, then you can try any boot manager software to add Windows Xp in Windows Boot Manager.