Preparation

As discussed in Chapter 2, "Getting Your Hardware and Software Ready for Windows XP" and Chapter 3, "Installing Windows XP Professional," it is certainly possible, with a bit of work, to run multiple operating systems on your Windows XP Professional computer. Whatever the operating system on your machine at the moment, you've no doubt spent hours and hours fine-tuning it and learning all the little quirks, and you probably have all the settings, applications, and data files arranged to your liking. Well, take heartyou can probably make it live harmoniously with Windows XP Professional.

CAUTION

Installing a new operating system is not always a smooth procedure, as you probably know. I strongly recommend that you create a backup, or at least an emergency repair disk before you install another operating system on your computer. That way, you can revert to it in case of catastrophe.

Depending on your current or planned system, running multiple operating systems can be as simple as installing your new copy of Windows XP alongside your current operating system. But if you're like me, that will not be the perfect choice. Either way, I'll try to cover all the common methods so you can make the choice that's right for you. After all, if you were the type who settles for things the way they were, you would skip this chapter because a single operating system is all you need.