Don’t Dual Boot! Use Virtual PC 2007 Instead
I just read Edgar's interesting comments to one of my previous Vista-related posts and took special note of his 3rd and 4th points where he said:
(3) The system does not come with any discs for the installed software; though I think that a boot disc for Vista can be purchased. Perhaps hard discs are more reliable than my diskette fileing system.
(4) The lack of backup discs makes me leery about trying to install Linux, since that involves changing the Windows Vista partition, always a nervous activity.
Edgar: The last time I bought an HP PC (about 5 or 6 years ago), it came with an option to create recovery discs on a series of CD-R discs. Check to see if your HP has that option.
More importantly though, unless you have some special requirements that requires Linux to have native access to your notebook, you should definitely consider installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 instead and use it to run the Linux distro of your choosing as a Guest OS on a Virtual Machine. I've used it to run Fedora Core, CentOS Linux (another Red Hat variant), SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu. Virtual PC is free. So, the price is right.
April 12th, 2007 - 19:19
Your advice to try MS Virtual PC 2007 is a good idea; I immediately went to the MS web site, read that the new version works with Vista (why is this good? are people unhappy with Vista?) and downloaded the usual umpty-ump megabytes; excitedly clicked on the setup.exe icon (same name as used by my previous big download of cygwin) only to be told that my Vista OS is not supported! The fine print mentions numerious Vista Enterprise versions, but not the humble Vista Home edition which I seem to have.
The remaining question is: if I blow away MS Vista while making a partition error in trying to load Linux, will the never ending infernal HP Registration pop-up window go away, or will it re-appear?
April 22nd, 2007 - 09:21
I checked with the Virtual Machines MVPs and was told that while the Virtual PC installer gives a support warning when installing on Vista Home Basic or Premium Edition, it does work.
September 16th, 2007 - 12:07
I just want to know where I can go, either by phone or email to get rid of the HP Registration pop-up that I keep getting on my computer every night at 9pm and I don’t even have an HP Computer.
February 19th, 2008 - 17:58
I just downloaded VPC 2007 on my HP computer. I heard that it’s great. I have no clue how to get it to work though. I think it’s because my OS is Vista home basic. What do I do?