I'm helping ANOther user to migrate from Win 10 Pro to Dual Boot XP and Win 10 Pro
I've recovered many dead or dying PCs over the years, but I've not so far worked on a dual boot system.
And I have no practical experience of Paragon - only browsed the documentation as yet.
His Hardware
-- Laptop, adequate RAM, Legacy MBR boot, 500GB HDD, Win 10 Pro, MS Office etc
-- Two partitions and plenty of unallocated space - 1) System Reserved Win RE [100MB] and 2) System Boot partition with all user data [300GB]
-- USB 2TB Backup drive with MS System Image + System Recovery CD
-- Belarc Report as software inventory.
I hope that Paragon Free will be adequate to migrate the current system folder to a new partition on the same hard disk (see plan).
Planned New environment
-- Same hardware, with re-partitioned HDD and a dual boot menu on power on
-- Partition 1 - XP system volume and boot
-- Partition 2 & 3 - Hidden WinRE; Win 10 system and boot
-- Partition 4 (ideally) - User data for both OS's
I hope each OS will be able to see its own AND all the other partitions and volumes
It would be good if we could both 1) avoid re-installing user apps (e.g. Office, Adobe etc etc) and 2) avoid export/import of user data
I've found posts saying that installing Win 10 without replacing an existing XP partition results in a dual boot system.
I've also found a post describing using SysPrep and the OOBE to move a system disk to new hardware without having to re-install application software.
This is my current plan -- If necessary Obtain drivers for XP if and save on ext USB drive
-- Install Paragon and create a recovery CD/DVD
-- Do a SystemImageBackup to ext USB drive
-- Use Paragon to Create a VHD of Win 10 C: on ext USB drive
-- Install XP into a small partition located at start of HDD. Remove all other partitions. Check it boots
-- Install Win 10 Pro to new partitions, leaving enough space still unallocated for user data If the posts I read are true, I now have a dual boot menu on startup. If not...
Do I need EasyBCD? or do I have to use Grub2?? (Hope not).
Also... Will XP see the Win 10 volume? and vice versa, will Win 10 see the XP volume?.
At this stage I expect three partitions and plenty of unallocated space.
The Win 10 system will be plain vanilla, with only a dummy user and no apps installed.
-- The VHD on the ext USB has all I need - Registry, Windows, Applications, Users and User data Can I use Paragon to recover this VHD into the Win 10 system partition?
If so, I don't need all those installation software downloads or separate recovery of user data.
Otherwise I can do it - it's just boring and slow.
Final Stage - Separate user data from software
I remember how easy it was in XP to move the My Documents system folder to another volume by right click.
I've found posts about doing the same thing in more current versions of Windows
- indeed I must do so on my own PC asap... why have I not yet done so??
As this is such a new forum, I hope that the old forum gurus will all see this post ...
May be I'll post a link on the wilderssecurity forum... Oh no I can't! - It's read only now of course
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