Want to use Windows 7 and 2003 in my computer simultaneously

Asked By jenifer paul 0 points N/A Posted on - 08/05/2011

I have been using Windows 2003 for two years, now I want to use Windows 7 in my computer simultaneously. But after installing Windows 2003 I can not Install windows 7 and vice versa.  How I can solve this kind of problem?

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Answered By KevinN 5 points N/A #100109

Want to use Windows 7 and 2003 in my computer simultaneously

First of all, I'd like to clarify what you mean by "simultaneously".  Does it mean :

1.  You want both Windows 2003 and Windows 7 to run at the same time?

or

2. You want to be able to select which Windows version to boot during startup?

If you mean the first one, you will have to install either Windows 2003 or Windows 7 as your main operating system and install a virtual machine where you will install the second OS (operating system).  Virtualbox (https://www.virtualbox.org/) is one such free tool.

If you mean the second one then what you want is to "dual boot".  There are several guides on the net on how to accomplish this.  Assuming you already have Windows 2003 running there are basically 3 steps:

1.  As with all operations involving changes to your hard drive, make sure to back up all important data to a separate drive or optical media.

2.  Create space  for Windows 7.  You could either add a new hard drive or repartition your existing hard drive.  There are free tools out there for repartitioning a hard drive without having to reformat it.

3.  Install Windows 7 to the new hard drive or partition.

We can discuss either option in more detail if you want.  Just post some more.

Hope this helps.

 

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Answered By Clair Charles 15 points N/A #100111

Want to use Windows 7 and 2003 in my computer simultaneously

Hello Jennifer Paul,

You will have to implement a dual boot if you want to use both windows 2003 and windows 7 on your computer, but then there factors that you will have to consider for you to do that.

First, the computer must be having a hard disk with enough space to hold the two operating systems. You will need to have a hard disk capacity of about 320 GB. The RAM capacity should be considerably high for the computer to be fast enough when running the two operating systems simultaneously, and I will recommend that the computer has a RAM capacity of not less than 3 GB.

With that checked, assuming you already have windows 2003 installed on the computer, you will CD an installation CD that has windows 7 and then run the installer. Be sure to put windows 7 on the same partition as windows 2003, and do not format the machine since that will remove the windows 2003.

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Regards
Clair Charles

 

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• Posted on - 11/15/2011
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