dual boot question

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cory21391

Posted on 03-08-10 04:49 PM

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I have an emachines that I use primarily for downloading so that my new gaming pc won't get viruses. I also use it because it has xp so I can play older games (like system shock 2) and do my schoolwork (Qbasic doesn't work in 7.)

I'm about to sell this computer, so I'll only have my main computer left, and I do not want it to get a virus, I have like a terabyte of data I definitely don't want to lose.

If I dual boot Windows XP to a small partition of my system drive, and say it gets a virus, is there any way that it can affect my Windows 7 installation? Or is there any way I can prevent this from happening?

Also, is there a way to deny access to my storage drives in this potentially virus infected Win XP installation?

I've gotten several viruses in the past due to torrenting, and it was fine on my emachines, a simple reinstall and I was on my way.

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Nikolaj

Posted on 03-10-10 06:56 PM

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I don't think a virus on the WinXP Partition would touch your Win7 Partition...
But Idk

paulguy

Posted on 03-10-10 07:10 PM

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	If the partition is readable by XP, then it is likely that I virus will seek it out and infect it. That's why if you connect a USB stick to some computers, that viruses which are running can make their way over to files on there, too. I think it'd be a bit better idea to just be a bit careful and install some kind of virus scanner and scan all executables as you download them (Don't really want to recommend a resident scanner, since those are always prone to performance problems that are worse than viruses themselves, sometimes.). ____________________ "In other news, Scientists theoretize that CHEESECAKE CHEESECAKE CHEESECAKE." --Blackhole89

Bond697

Posted on 03-11-10 04:30 PM (rev. 2 of 03-11-10 04:33 PM)

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you could change the permissions on the drives/folders/partitions not only allow access to your username in xp... i think. i have no need to dual-boot so I'm not sure exactly how it would work. really, though, grab yourself microsoft security essentials and be careful and you should be ok. mse is quite nice in terms of virus/malware protection and has a pretty small memory footprint.

as for a virus somehow "seeking out" xp partitions off of a thumb drive, he's talking about leaving auto-run on on the pc and something auto-executing off of the usb stick. the odds of a piece of malware jumping off of a thumb drive in win xp and going, "hey! windows 7! let's go over there!" is pretty slim. a virus almost always will target the current system partition, which will be win xp.

btw, system shock and system shock 2 both work fine in windows 7 x64, so you don't need to worry about playing them in xp.

for a dual-boot, you may want to follow this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

Ailure

Posted on 03-24-10 01:14 PM (rev. 2 of 03-24-10 01:16 PM)

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Posted by paulguy
If the partition is readable by XP, then it is likely that I virus will seek it out and infect it. That's why if you connect a USB stick to some computers, that viruses which are running can make their way over to files on there, too.

Highly depends on the virus. I suspect majority of viruses don't really bother with "other" system partitions, and you can probably prevent some infection by tweaking the user access/rights.

Posted by cory21391
I have an emachines that I use primarily for downloading so that my new gaming pc won't get viruses. I also use it because it has xp so I can play older games (like system shock 2) and do my schoolwork (Qbasic doesn't work in 7.)

Use a Virtual machine. Some of the better ones can actually run old games decently now, and QBasic should even run fine under Dosbox.

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cory21391

Posted on 03-28-10 06:44 PM

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I chose to use VMWare and have a VM with PCLinuxOS and a VM with Win XP. I will say it runs A LOT better than I thought, but it's not as fast as I'd like (i.e. loading multiple apps at once) and it's sound and advanced video output are VERY lacking (sound isn't even plausible at this point, huge amount of audio skipping) but it's decent and better than setting up a dual boot, expecially considering I can't for some reason. My PC blue screens in the Win XP installation and fails at PC Linux OS installation (it can't even boot into the live cd) which is very annoying, considering how much I spent on this gaming PC....

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