Running Multiple Operating Systems simultaneously

Posted by : Unknown Friday, 4 October 2013

Bored of your same old windows Operating System?wanna try something new?or need to use linux for your development project or something?if the answer is yes,then don't risk formatting your hard drive or dedicating an entire drive for dual or multiple boot for something which you would use only once in a while.

Today lets see how to achieve our above mentioned goal through a simple concept of virtualization.in short its nothing but creating a virtual environment for another operating system to run on your current operating system

windows xp in windows 7 in windows 8 virtualization

As you can see my current OS is windows 8 pro which is referred to as the Host OS and i'm running two guest OSystems ie., windows 7 and windows Xp and that too i can work with all of them at the same time.lets not go too deep ino how it works but lets see how you can do it

First of all you would need a virtualization software like Oracle Virtual box or vmware player
i would be using oracle virtual box for this demonstration and we will be installing kolibri OS ( perhaps the smallest of all )
After installing virtual box,open it now click the " new " button to create a new virtual machine

creating virtual macj=hine in virtual box step 1

Now type in a name for your os,and probably vbox would automatically detect the os by its name if its accurate enough or you can select the Operating system and flavor manually if you donno about the os much you can simply select "other " in both os and version

Select the base RAM size i suggest do not exceed more than half of your original ram size because you have to be running both the Host and the guest OS and always prefer allocating the Recommended base memory size..

You can select either VDI or VMDK but the advantage with VDI is its trad able ,ie you create a virtual machine and you can give that VDI file to your friend so that he can use it directly

You have to allocate the hard disk space for your OS don't give it too much just choose how much you need and make sure it meets the minimum hard disk space requirements of the OS and by clicking that folder icon you can change the location where your hard disk is stored i suggest change it to some other drive than your root drive

Now select your newly created os,click settings ->network tab and change the network adapter to Bridged Connection

Now start your os and then the first run wizard will pop up asking you to select the boot file which is supposed to be an iso file of your OS

Thats it you can run almost every possible OS you can find.some visuals may vary in newer versions of virtual box but the basic steps remain the same.
You can create as many virtual machines as you like