Hi Anwar--

I just want to toss out a couple things to you. I don't know how many pcs
are involved but it sounds like a work place and that you may have quite a
few pcs on your network. I don't know much about your situation but maybe
one of these would help you:

Bootit Next Generation
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Vista Boot Pro
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Easy BCD
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

http://blogs.msdn.com/jolson/archive...r-bcdedit.aspx
__________________________________________________ __________

Third party boot managers are ususally overwritten, but the above work fine
(I don't know if they tailor to the size ofyour network though. I have
another suggestion below.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282110

1) If you have a dual boot situation, or a multiboot situation, you probably
realize something that I've always found convenient. You can access either
desktop from the other without rebooting by simply typing the file path of
the other OS and you can access the desktop or any particular folder. MSFT
is revising Foldershare in December, and that's another way to do this and
they'll be calling it Folder Sync with added functionality. But you
mentioned applications and you also seem to be in a work environment with a
number of unknown pcs--possibly at different physical locations.

Hypver-V Solutions

Maybe this is not your situation, but I just wanted to toss out the option.
You can learn a lot more at
www.microsoft.com/virtualization

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...us/hyperv.aspx

2) Without knowing more, I don't know if this would be of benefit to you but
if you have a number of b oxes, you can accomplish what I think you want to
do and you can try it free. I can tell you properly set up using Windows
Server 2008 the machines would not run slowly at all. I think your slowness
in the situations you described may have been due to RAM limitations that
you have dealt out from the initial box, using Virtual PC 2007 that are
inherent in its use.

I'm talking about Hyper-V (the MSFT Virtual Machine using Windows Server
2008 and they have two or three tiers depending on your needs and the number
of computers.

The solution that may work for you is called MED-V or MSFT Enterprise
Virtualization. This would allow you to install your dual boot on one
machine and then virtualize very easily out through your entire network, set
very detailed permissions and even allow your end users to customize their
wall paper if you like. It saves a lot of money and a lot of time, but
again I don't know how many machines and users are in your environment.

Good luck,

CH




"Anwar Mahmood" <amahmood5@uclan.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:2dab831b-2ad2-4979-bddd-8b6165e99194@b38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Hi All,
>
> We're using Windows XP at the moment, but have Windows Vista as well.
> We use Windows Deployment Services (WDS) to image PCs across the
> network.
>
> We've not got everything working on Windows Vista yet, some people
> would like to use it, yet still be able to access applications that
> are currently only available on Windows XP.
>
> Originally, we used Virtual PC 2007 on Windows Vista, and ran Windows
> XP virtually. Worked fine, but
> - XP running virtually is slow
> - some of our PCs have only 512Mb RAM, so dual booting isn't always
> an option
>
> All our PCs have only one HDD. Dual booting the "Microsoft" way
> involves
> - install Windows XP 1st on one partition
> - install Windows Vista 2nd on a second partition
>
> Vista will replace XP's MBR and provide dual booting capabilities.
> However,
> - the first partition will be C:, and the second partition will be D:
> - hence Windows XP will be "correct", but Windows Vista will be
> installed to D:\WINDOWS, D:\Program Files, etc
> - both OSes can see both partitions
> - you can hide the Vista partition within XP, but you can't hide the
> C: partition from Vista because it is the system partition
>
> We use a software delivery process that requires C:\WINDOWS, so the
> Vista installation is useless.
>
> What I need is a third party boot manager, that will
> - provide a menu that lists available OSes
> - configures which partitions are visible, then passes the boot
> sequence on to the respective OS
> - each OS is installed to a C: drive
>
> In the past, I've used Ranish Partition Manager for this, which works
> very well, but it is a manual install and configure exercise. With
> our current environment, computer setup is almost *completely*
> automated;
> - user unboxes PC
> - user registers the PC (this is our own process, but essentially
> this allocates an IPv4 address on the DHCP server, creates a computer
> object in AD, and a few other things)
> - user boots to the network (F12 / PXE boot)
> - user selects an image from the WDS menu
> - both Windows XP and Windows Vista have been automated, so neither
> asks the user for any input
> - 30 minutes later, the computer is ready to use
>
> This is something end users do themselves. I need to use a third
> party boot manager, but deployed and managed through the "network",
> automatically, preferably through WDS.
>
> I don't think it can be done, but I can't possibly be the only one
> grappling with this one!
>
> Any and all ideas are welcome!
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Anwar