O/S + Partitions + MultiBoot

Good day. Before I go and do this via trial and error, thought I'd ask advice first.

My current IDE drive is dual-boot, partitioned for XP & Vista. I also have all earlier O/S, Win95 thru Win2K, loaded in MS virtual PC (VPC); accessed from my XP sessions.

I'm wanting to install Win7 and unsure how I want to go about it. Haven't purchased it yet & unsure at this point whether to get just the upgrade or full OEM version. I think I have only a couple options....

Question #1. Recommend procedure?
1) Tri-boot system, re-partition and load Win7 on its own partition
2) Move XP into virtual PC & install MS VPC on Vista. Not sure if it's just as simple as that. Net result is dual boot to Vista or Win7
3) Other?

Note. When I decided to get Vista, I bought an upgrade version expecting to convert XP to Vista. During installation, Vista install said sorry, can't upgrade but we can install the full version. So I simply aborted, ensured I had my partitions set appropriately and re-entered installation. This time I opted for the full install and all went relatively smoothly. Anyone know if this "upgrade to full install" feature is also applicable to Win7? If so and deciding on a 3rd boot option, I can attempt to upgrade XP to Win7, expecting the same scenario.

Question #2. Should I decide to keep dual-boot & move XP into VPC, anyone ever move already-installed VPCs from one O/S to the other? I definitely don't want to be forced to re-install Win95-Win2K into VPC on Win7 or Vista; though I realize I'll have to install XP into the VPC. I'll research this a bit, but any experienced advice is welcomed.
Question #2 Answered/Resolved. I installed VPC7 on Vista as a test. I was able to simply add existing virtual machines to it. No biggie & quite easy. Even Win95 with IE5 worked flawlessly. FYI: Win7 has its own VPC version.

If I remember correctly Windows7 will create a separate partition automatically although, I am not sure what happens if Win7 is the secondary operating system being installed. Although, I would assume it would act the same as the others when you dual/triple boot them.

It all depends on what you are after. If you have the processing power and ram I recommend using an emulator, I have been using virtual box. It makes it much easier to move in and out of environments.

I have Win7 as my OS, and use Virtual Box for everything else, mainly XP and linux, hate messing with vista...

Actually my questions may now be resolved. Since VPC for Win7 has its own XP environment I think I'd be safe in upgrading my XP (full version) to Win7; though I prefer clean installs. I can then install XP into VPC. I've heard that Win7 has an XP mode, but that is available on which? Professional, Ultimate, basic? Any pro's for using a triple-boot system?

According to my Win7 packaging, XP mode is on Professional and Ultimate.

You may be aware of this already, but it only uses a basic pseudo graphics card, so it isn't apt for playing games etc.


In terms of the upgrade licence, I'm fairly sure that you don't need to (and may not be able to) actually upgrade - instead you can do a completely new install, and maybe not even "show" it the previous disk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by si_the_geek

In terms of the upgrade licence, I'm fairly sure that you don't need to (and may not be able to) actually upgrade - instead you can do a completely new install, and maybe not even "show" it the previous disk.

---

Well that does give me a couple of options then