On 20 Nov, 21:25, "Chad Harris" <Windo...@Blackcombville.net> wrote:
> Anwar--
>
> It's entirely as Philo said using Virtual PC 2007 or 2004. In that
> situation, you're sure going to have a RAM limitation and you should haveat
> least 2GB to start with--for sure if the PC only has 512MB to deal from.
> If multibooting will work for you in your network then I highly recommend
> it--I dual boot and triple boot all the time and it works very well for me.
>
> CH
>
> "AnwarMahmood" <amahmo...@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
Hi All,
Thanks to Chad and Philo for your replies.
Running Vista "native" and XP "virtual" won't be an option because of
the 512Mb RAM limitation I mentioned.
Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation is probably going to cost a huge
amount of money in hardware. We have thousands of desktops, but I
only need to dual boot on a fraction of these; trouble is, I don't
know whether that fraction will be 1/50 or 1/2!
I've found a third party boot manager, Boot-US, (
http://www.boot-
us.com) that can be installed and configured from the command line, so
I can control it using scripts, SETUPCOMPLETE.CMD, etc.
Windows XP and Windows Vista will be installed to separate partitions,
but both OSes will treat "their" partition as the C: drive (ie, 2 C
drives!). This can *only* work with "clever" partition hiding
(standard partition hiding isn't good enough!)
I've also got to get this working through Windows Deployment Services.
I think I've got all the pieces of a jigsaw, but don't know
- how to put them all together
- *whether* they can fit together seamlessly!
Kind regards,
Anwar