Dual boot or VM? help needed

Ok so I have been having some complications with finding a VM that will work for me on my OS which is Windows Vista Home Basic. I would like to find a VM that would allow me to run Windows Xp on that.

If that can't be done, could someone explain to me how I could go about dual booting. I'm not entirely sure what that is but someone has recommended that to me so I can run robotzindisguise's MTA bot. If anyone could provide some instructions on how to go about this I would greatly appreciate it. I'm not very computer literate so if you could noob down the computer expressions for me to understand I would appreciate that too.

 

I have Vista Home Premium, and Vmware Workstation 6 works perfectly for me. In the vm I boot from a TinyXp iso. It is Xp, but without all the stuff you don't need.

 

Double post.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

I've used that before to test linux distros on my Vista partition. It's great and works perfectly too.

If you want XP for a short amount of time, use the VM. If you'll be extensively using it, then install XP on a partition.

If you'll be using a partition, the XP installer has options to create partitions out of existing hard drives.

 

well a VM and dual boot are diffrent.

In VM your running 2 OSs at the same time

with Dual boot you choose wich one you want to use

to dual boot you have to reformat your computer (or get a new hard drive) then but in your OS CD and make a partition of how much of the hard drive you want to be used with that OS

 

You don't necessarily need to format your computer when dual booting. If there is enough space for both operating systems (and any extra files) you can use the OS installer to modify the hard drive to form a partition for both OS' and it will work fine.

 

i prefer VM since u can use your computer while your VM is doing something else...