Best Way To Put Windows XP on HDD With LMDE

[merryoakparker]

I'm getting ready to reload WindowsXP SP3 onto my computer along with LMDE.
Pentium D 2.66 MHz Chip
2Gigs of RAM
320 Gig HDD

Which is preferable, a dual boot or putting Windows into a virtual box within LMDE? Recommendations and opinions, please.

I need Windows to run only 2 programs which will not run on any Linux distro: Movie Organizer (with my 600+ dvd's cataloged) and J.Rivers Media Jukebox with over 10k files in smart lists, etc. Moving the music files to Banshee or other Linux jukebox problem will require re-cataloging all of the files. And that's a lot of work. Other than these 2 programs, I can do everything else with LMDE.
Thanks.

[stratus_ss]

Based on your specs your system may hurt a little bit running in a VM. However I am not familiar with those two programs and if they are not too intensive you should be ok.

If you decide to do the dual boot method, install Windows first, and then Mint, otherwise you can wind up with boot loader problems

[veggen]

Can't you get those programs to run with Wine?
VM is a lot safer option, so just give it a go and if it doesn't work for any reason, install Win for real.
If you go for the full install, and you already have LMDE installed, be prepared to reinstall Grub as Win installation will destroy it. Just search the forums or Google for more info on this, it's been heavily documented.

[merryoakparker]

Thanks to both of you. I have tried WINE and neither program will run on a Linux distro. I have a much older computer with only a 1.4 GHZ chip and 1536 RAM and have a dual boot with Windows XP and LMDE. It runs fine. I use it to experiment with different programs, usually mistakes. I guess I'll use a dual boot. The J Rivers Media Jukebox will play on LMDE, but not load music to it's database.

Thanks,
Dick

[merryoakparker]

I hope this is the final question re: Windows in a VirtualBox on LMDE.
If I am running a jukebox program in Windows in the VirtualBox, can I simultaneously use LMDE for my browser, etc???

Thanks,

[cwsnyder]

Whether you can use LMDE for anything depends on the amount of resources left after you assign resources to run your Windows virtual machine. Windows XP by itself can run with 512M RAM or less, and if the VM has half of the installed RAM or less for your physical machine, you should have no problems running anything in LMDE.