I've been interested in running another OS on my Thinkpad for some time but I've never been able to make enough room on the hard drive. Now that I have an extra 750 gigs to work with, I think I can finally make some space.
If I add another partition and install Windows 7 on it, could I configure it to use certain user folders (the ones under C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginID, i.e., "My Documents" and "My Music") on the WinXP partition? I'd also like to run Thunderbird/Firefox/MS Office/various games/etc from the XP partition without worrying where temp files and data files are stored (I'm assuming 7 is backward compatible.)
Can it be done?
--j_k
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
Dual booted now -- looks like it won't work, though.
--j_k
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
What is Windows 7? Is that Vista?
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Windows 7 is the next one after Vista. It's currently in Beta.
Word is that it's pretty good, but that could just be because it's being compared to Vista.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
JTK, Windows 7 uses the same user profile scheme that Windows Vista uses. There is no longer a Documents and Settings folder. It's located under the "users" folder instead. Takes a little getting used to as well.
In order to have both partitions see the same data, that data needs to be saved on a third partition which holds only data. You can modify XP to point to that drive to hold its user data by following the instructions here.
In Windows 7 (assuming the general UI is similar to Vista), you can right click on any folders in your User folder, click properties, and then change the location to save and view files from the My Documents folder on the third partition. This should get you what you want, but I haven't yet tried this myself.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
I've been playing around with it for a few days; it's really nice.
OpenGL support seems to be lacking, though. One of my projects drops to about 1 FPS -- a slideshow. Not sure why.