Try Windows 7 without affecting your current system
Virtual PC can create virtual machines to host many operating systems
Windows 7 is almost here, and the beta has had such glowing reviews that you might be tempted to try it for yourself.
You could just install it over your existing Windows installation and hope that everything runs smoothly, but that's not recommended, especially because clean installs will be required for European Windows upgraders.
A safer option is to install Windows 7 on a separate hard drive partition so that you can choose to boot either to your existing operating system or to Windows 7 when your PC starts.
Alternatively, using virtualisation software, you could run Windows 7 inside a window on your current XP or Vista desktop, which would be a very convenient way to try it out.
Both approaches have their own quirks and problems, though, so it pays to understand them properly before trying to install Windows 7 on your system. Here's everything that you need to know.
Prepare your machine
Both the dual-boot and virtual machine approaches to running Windows 7 will require a large chunk of your hard drive space: around 10GB when finished and even more for the installation process. These requirements will only grow as you install and use your applications.
If this is an issue for you, take an hour or two to free up hard drive space on your system, running the Windows Disk Cleanup tool, uninstalling unwanted applications and deleting large files that you just don't need any more. It's really not worth trying to cram Windows 7 into a tiny space.
Once that's finished, defragment your hard drive. This consolidates your free space into one or two large blocks, which will help to improve performance, particularly if you're running Windows 7 in a virtual machine. A virtual hard drive that's badly fragmented can really slow you down.
Another complication with the virtual machine approach is the way it chews up system memory. If you want to run Windows 7 in a window on your Vista desktop, you'll need to dedicate at least 1GB of RAM to it if you want to see reasonable performance. Ideally you'd want even more if you're expecting a slick response.
So, even if you have 4GB available you could find around half your memory being grabbed by the Windows 7 virtual machine, which could have a serious effect on your current applications. Now would be a very good time to ensure that your PC is making the best possible use of its RAM.
Browse through all those icons in your system tray, and if you find any apps you don't need, look for options to prevent them loading at boot time. Next, use a tool such as Autoruns to inspect any other programs that are configured to start when Windows loads, and remove those services that are surplus to requirements.
Running Windows 7 in a virtual machine
Microsoft Virtual PC is a free tool used to create and manage virtual machines (read our short review of it). These are essentially software implementations of PC hardware that run in a window on your current desktop. The virtual machine (or VM) is completely isolated from the host PC, so you can install a new operating system and apps, and even format the virtual hard drive without messing up your existing system. Sounds great, right?
VIRTUAL PC: MS Virtual PC has a decent list of supported guest operating systems
Well, it's certainly handy, but there's one significant problem, especially with regard to Windows 7: graphics. VMs are rarely up to high-performance graphics tasks, and so emulate extremely basic video cards that can't handle the full Aero interface. Windows 7 will work, but you'll only see its 'Basic' interface: no transparency, no Aero peek and no big taskbar preview windows.
It's a similar story elsewhere, too: you can run 2D apps like Microsoft Office just fine, but games or other 3D apps almost certainly won't work. If you can live with that limitation, grab a copy of Virtual PC from the Microsoft website. Don't worry too much about the overly fussy system requirements. Microsoft doesn't support running Virtual PC on Windows XP Home, for instance, but in our experience it works just fine.
Windows 7 isn't yet listed as a supported guest operating system either, but we've yet to see any problems. So go ahead, download and install the program – it's surprisingly small and will only take a moment.
Create your virtual system
It's time to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in. Launch Virtual PC and click 'Next' twice to begin the process of creating a virtual machine. Give it a meaningful name like 'Windows 7' and click 'Next'. Choose 'Windows Vista' as your target operating system (it doesn't matter that this is actually incorrect) and click 'Next'.
By default, Virtual PC will allocate 512MB of RAM to this VM, but this amount really isn't enough. We would suggest allocating half your PC's installed RAM, up to a maximum of 1.5GB. To do this, click 'Adjusting the RAM' and choose the figure you'd like before finally clicking 'Next' again.
MEMORY: Make sure you give your Windows 7 enough RAM to operate
Your VM's hard drive will actually just be a large file on your PC's hard drive. Choose to create 'a new virtual hard drive' and click 'Next', then enter the drive size. Enter 25,000MB for now: Virtual PC won't claim this all at once, and you can edit the figure later. Click 'Next', then select 'Finish'.
Now place the Windows 7 disc into a DVD drive, double-click your new VM in the Virtual PC console and wait for the set-up program to load. If it doesn't start up properly, open the CD menu and tell Virtual PC to use the drive containing your disc, then click 'Action | Reset'. The machine should now reboot and launch Windows setup.
Now work your way through the set-up process, choosing the 'Custom (advanced)' install type and pointing Windows 7 at the virtual drive you created earlier. It'll then go to work installing Windows 7 for you, and you can begin trying it out.
Virtual machines are convenient, but as we've seen, they don't support 3D games or other graphics-intensive applications. There are significant limitations with hardware, too: a Virtual PC VM won't recognise USB devices, for instance (apart from a mouse or keyboard).
And of course you can't properly assess Windows 7's boot time, file copy speed or any other performance measurement by running it in a VM, because it's an artificial environment that will always run significantly slower than a full PC. If you want the full Windows 7 experience, your best option is to create a separate hard drive partition where the operating system can be installed.
When your PC boots you'll then see a new menu with the option to launch either Windows 7 or your current OS. Choose the one you need and it'll have complete access to your hardware with none of the limitations of a VM. If you're running Windows Vista then you can partition your hard drive directly from the Disk Management console. This shouldn't cause any problems at all, but there are no guarantees, so back up your hard drive before you start.
Then launch 'diskmgmt.msc', right-click your current hard drive partition, select 'Shrink volume' and choose the size you'd like to allocate to Windows 7. Again, this should be 25GB at an absolute minimum, and ideally a lot more. Give Windows 7 as much drive space as you can spare.
Now right-click the unallocated space, select 'New simple volume', and work through the wizard, allocating all of the available space to your new partition and performing a quick format with the NTFS filesystem. And that's it: the partitioning is done. Partitions on XP If you have Windows XP, life is a little more complicated, as you'll need to download third-party software to carve up your drive.
Fortunately, there are plenty of free and very capable options. GParted is one of the best out there. Download the GParted ISO disc image and use it to create a bootable CD. Your disc-burning software should have an option to handle ISO images, but if you have problems then use a third party tool like ISO Recorder, which is available from here.
GPARTED: GParted provides an easy way to create and resize XP hard drive partitions
Before you continue, make sure you've backed up your hard drive, or at least any critical data on it. GParted is one of the most heavily used and respected drivepartitioning tools around, so it's most unlikely that your hardware will come to harm, but any lowlevel drive tinkering of this sort has some level of risk attached. As always it's better to be safe than sorry with this sort of thing.
When you're ready to go, boot from the GParted CD, choose the 'Default settings' option and then select 'Don't touch keymap'. Next, pick your language and accept the default operating mode, then locate the partition you're going to resize, select 'Resize/Move' and choose how much space you'd like to give Windows 7 (remember, we suggest 25GB or more).
After that, click 'Resize', then 'Apply'. Next, right-click over the unallocated space and select 'New' from the dropdown menu to see the Create New Partition dialog. Make sure both 'Free space' values are set to zero and that the 'New size' value is set to the maximum partition size, so your new partition is using all the available space.
PARTITION SIZE: Give your partition enough space to fit Windows 7 on easily or you could run into troubles
Choose 'Primary partition' from the 'Create As' list, select 'NTFS' as your filesystem and click 'Add' then 'Apply' to create a Windows 7-sized space on your hard drive. Job done.
Install Windows 7
Now boot your PC from a Windows 7 DVD and work through the installation process. Be sure to choose the 'Custom (advanced)' installation type, then point the set-up program to your empty new partition.
Because you're installing Windows 7 to your real hard drive as opposed to a virtual machine, be very careful here. Click the wrong partition and your current Windows files will be replaced by Windows 7 – not what you wanted at all.
Once you've passed this stage, there's very little more that you need to do. The Windows 7 setup program requires fewer clicks than previous versions, and it gets its work done more quickly too, so a dual–boot installation could be finished in 15 to 30 minutes. You can then start Windows 7 from your PC boot menu, or the Virtual PC console, and start discovering exactly what all the fuss is about.
Virtual machine vs dual-boot
So which Windows 7 trial method is best, then? In most cases, we prefer virtual machines. They're slower and don't fully support 3D graphics or USB devices, but in general that really doesn't matter. We think most people want to explore Windows 7 to try out the new taskbar, libraries, Start menu, search tools or Explorer, not play Crysis or watch Freeview on a USB TV tuner.
If that sounds like you, then it makes sense to try Windows 7 in a virtual machine before you do anything else. However, if after trying the virtual machine you find that you want a more complete look at Windows 7 – or if you know that you'll be frustrated by the lack of functionality within a VM – give dual-boot a try.
It's surprisingly easy, particularly if you're running Vista, and you could have a system running in under 45 minutes.