Partitioning questions

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So I have been having some issues with several of my favorite games in Windows 7. So since I have plenty of left over space on my hard drive, I plan install Windows XP on a new partition.
So I just have some questions.
- How exactly DO I create a partition?
- Will installing Windows XP 32-bit cause less RAM to be available to W7 64-BIT?
- Will there be any conflict between the two OS's?
- Will installing Windows XP significantly slow down the computer?
- And finally, is there anything else I should be aware of?
 
How exactly DO I create a partition?
The installer will let you create new partitions in empty space, but by left over I mean space that hasn't been allocated to a partition. If you've got such space, then the installer will enable you to create a partition in it.
However, I don't think it will let you resize existing partitions to make space (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that!) The simplest way would probably be to use a linux livecd and ntfstools to resize the partition - I could explain it all here but it's easier just to point you to a link ;) http://www.nishants.net/articles/ntfsresize.htm

Will installing Windows XP 32-bit cause less RAM to be available to W7 64-BIT?
No :)

Will there be any conflict between the two OS's
As long as you keep the system part of them completely seperate then nope. What I tend to do when running more than one OS (*nix, windows) is create a partition for each OS and keep all my data and documents on a completely seperate, shared partition. This means that you can lock off each OS from accessing another's partition, but you can still access and modify your documents between OS's without any issues :)

Will installing Windows XP significantly slow down the computer?
Nope :) Shouldn't slow it down at all! Don't forget you're not going to be running both at once (unless I'm misunderstanding you?) so it's not a case of halving the resources per OS you install or anything like that.

And finally, is there anything else I should be aware of?
Back up all your data before playing around with partitions just in case - it can go wrong, and if it does then you generally need to wipe the drive and start afresh - be warned!

Hope that's helped :)
 
- How exactly DO I create a partition?
You can do this in W7, during the install process for XP (more difficult, I think, than W7 or Vista installs, so I would avoid this), or, my recommended solution would be to download PartedMagic and use that. It's pretty much seamless. I used it to move an entire OS partition and I ended up with no errors (other than having to run the install disk to correct where the "beginning" of partition started so it could boot). I highly recommend it. If you let me know which you'll be doing (either W7 or PartedMagic), I can walk you through it. What does your HDD partition table look like right now? Just one big partition with W7 on it?

- Will installing Windows XP 32-bit cause less RAM to be available to W7 64-BIT?

Not at all.

- Will there be any conflict between the two OS's?
Nope. (see down below)

- Will installing Windows XP significantly slow down the computer?

Nope. If you are running W7 okay, you should be able to run XP okay. I'd say they are pretty comparable in my experience; W7 uses a more RAM, I've found. That's to be expected. It's much better than Vista though.

- And finally, is there anything else I should be aware of?

Well, you really should install the newest OS after the oldest. So, XP -> Vista -> W7. That's because obviously, the older OSs aren't going to know the new ones. However, just give it a try. It won't delete W7 by any means, but it might screw up the boot table and whatnot. You'll just have to try it and if you have problems, just let us know. Regardless, you will be able to access XP. We just might have to tweak it to see the W7 partition again.
 
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