How to run two Operating Systems same time on your PC

How to run two Operating Systems same time on your PC

Running two operating systems at a same time is not a need of daily routine. It is necessary for the troubleshooting or testing purpose. It saves time to Reboot computer to another operating system and it is also very useful when a user wants to test something on any other Operating System. there are several tools which can be used for Virtual Operating system to be installed on already running Operating System.

Most popular free tools are 

Microsoft Virtual PC
and
Oracle VM VirtualBox

How to run two Operating Systems same time on your PCHere i am using Oracle VM VirtualBox to run Windows XP on my Windows 8.1 Operating system. we can also install Linux, Unix, Fedora, Mac OS, Windows 7 etc through Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Steps to install Oracle VM VirtualBox and its Configuration are as follows:

Step 1. Download Oracle VM VirtualBox from the link.

Step 2. Install Oracle VM VirtualBox from the setup file you downloaded.

Step 3. Now Open the VirtualBox from the desktop icon.

Step 4. Click on New button on the window of VirtualBox.

Step 5. Type the Name with anything you want to give, because we can install as many Operating Systems Virtually in VirtualBox.

and
Select the type to  Microsoft Windows if you want to install Microsoft Windows and you can also choose Linux, Solaris, Mac etc if u want to run these Operating Systems on your current operating System.
Then select the version of the Operating System such as Microsoft Windows 2000,XP,7,8,8.1 etc. Here i want to install Windows XP, so i have selected Windows XP. Then click on Next button.

Step 6. Give the amount of RAM you want to give to your Virtual Operating System, in case of Windows XP minimum required RAM is 192 MB, If u have more than 2 GB RAm then you can five 512 MB of RAM to run Windows Virtually very smoothly and you can also increase the amount of RAM top be shared. here i have 6 GB of RAM so i am sharing 2 GB for Windows XP VirtualBox so i can install Windows XP quickly. After giving RAM size click on Next button.

Step 7. Now choose Create a virtual hard drive now. if you are new to virtualbox. It will create a Virtual Drive on your existing hard disk by allocating some space of your hard disk. Then click on Create.

Step 8. Choose VDI(Virtual Disk Image) from the options shown, and click on Next.

Step 9. Now choose Dynamically allocated if you are not aware of how much Hard Disk Virtual Operating system needs to install. VirtualBox will allocate the required Disk space by itself. But make sure you have minimum 1 GB free space on any of the hard disk drive of your computer. And click on Next.

Step 10. Now click on Create button. If you want to change the name of your virtual Operating Systems Image file then you can change the name and Storage path by itself and you can also increase or decrease the size of hard disk to be allocated by VirtualBox, if you don't know anything about this then leave the default options and click on Create.

Step 11. Now you are done with the basic configuration of Virtual Operating System, and you will see the below window.

Step 12. Now insert the Windows XP CD into CD/DVD Drive or Mount the iso image of Windows XP through Daemon Tools or UltraISO software. I personally recommend UltraISO. Which is my favorite tool.

Step 13. now i have mounted Windows XP image to DVD Drive H. You can use your Windows XP CD if you don't have an iso image, and note down the drive of your CD/DVD Drive.

Step 14. Now click on Start button of Oracle VM VirtualBox Window.

Step 15. Now choose the CD/DVD drive from the drop-down box. and click on Start.

Step 16. Now isntallation od Windows XP from the CD/DVD will be started and follow the steps to install Windows XP in Oracle VirtualBox.

Now wait for sometime to complete the installation of Windows XP and later you can use Real Windows XP interface in Oracle VM VirtualBox. and you can also access Internet on Windows XP running on Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7. By this method you can install as many Operating Systems for testing or just study purpose.

Tip: Don't worry about the step asking to format and create the partition, it will not delete your data on hard disk. It will only create a partition virtually which will not harm your data as well as Hard Disk. The time required to install the Operating System depends on the RAM shared and Processor used. I am running Intel I5 3rd Generation processor with 6 GB of RAM and i shared 2 GB RAM and it tool 20 mins to install Windows XP on my already running Windows 8.1.

How to run two Operating Systems same time on your PC