Windows is even more evil than we thought

I was being poetic :) I meant that as "not an SSD" to clarify how it might perform.

Yep.

It's settable - with Virtualbox, you can shut the machine down and vary how much RAM it grabs, and then there's a bit of overhead.

Obviously, if you specify too little RAM for a VM, it can cause performance problems.

I was using this to stress the memory out, and had other things running as well. I am sure there are things that require more than 4GB but I seem not to do them.

You mean rust as opposed to beach sand.

So much for Spock on Start Trek, who is all left brain. I agree that one can't divorce emotion from calculation. When I grind the numbers, the answers need to pass my "sanity check" or "duz this look right?" exam. I must admit that I do this rather badly and often miss obvious order of magnitude errors.

However, for Windoze install, it's often necessary to disable both the emotional and logical parts of the brain, and simply blunder forward without thinking. Trying to understand what's happening behind the curtain in a typical Windoze install is the short cut to insanity.

However, I was thinking of Mr DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno, who seems driven by his right brain (emotional) rather than the left brain (logical). That would explain the chronic factual and logical errors. At least he's attempting to fix the problem by beating the right(?) side of his brain against the double drywall. I suspect this might be more counterproductive than beneficial.

Resorting to logic over computation is very tempting among experts. It's a great shortcut and in my limited experience, has a fairly good batting average. It also saves considerable tedious work. However, in the end, an intuitive solution needs to be substantiated by math or rigorous logic.

Sometimes I wonder if logic is truly external to human nature or if it is just a result of our existence. Certainly things like beauty is a reflection of how we are constructed.... perhaps. But I'm not totally sure logic or science is any more than a belief system. Only time will tell and none of us have much of that.

It is plain that you do not know how to read.

I pete again (re-pete), you do not know how to read.

Pray tell what you mean "won't work". Notice i had two different Win7 partitions. Been many years, perhaps there were no added programs other than IE, which was all i needed.

Pray tell what you mean by "won't work". Note i had two Win7 partitions; most likely only IE (which was all i needed).

Hmmm...is left brain "out of its right mind"??

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 02:56:15 -0700, Robert Baer Gave us:

It is plain you cannot only not explain your pathetic setup, but you cannot defend it either.

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 03:03:21 -0700, Robert Baer Gave us:

You are too stupid to "add a program".

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 03:05:47 -0700, Robert Baer Gave us:

Double post much, idiot?

Not a simple exercise, installing a trimmed down version of W7, particularly if the accumulated raft of updates is also expected/required.

I think there might also be disk size issues with the earlier OS if located on a multiboot HDD that is large enough to include partitions for (default install options) W7 and later as boot options.

Not to mention other hardware incompatabilities that MS has managed to enforce, if you start with OS of W2k or older in the first partition.

It seems like a lot of work, simply to differentiate between versions of Internet Explorer - something that I only use if a website refuses any other option.

RL

The operating system install will fail or not start. The installer first checks to see if there is enough disk space available and stops if it's insufficient. See "The Sorcerers Apprentice" for an example of what happens when a disk drive overflows: You'll have bits and bytes floating all over your computer, room, house, or neighborhood if you force the install. A flood of random data is not a pretty sight and very messy to clean up.

Incidentally, Microsoft has known about the problem of falling asleep during the install and has thoughtfully provided dialog boxes with useless legal approvals throughout the installation in order to insure that you are still awake.

Standby, while I warm up my crystal ball. Ok, filaments are warm and I'm getting a picture. I see two partitions, with parts of your operating system scattered between the two partitions. This will work if you don't mind waiting for the disk to seek between partitions. Two partitions was the default layout from some really ancient Windoze systems, where the manufacturer thought that big partitions were a bad idea or tried to separate programs and data in different partitions. It is possible for you to combine both partitions into one big Drive C: using Gparted. However, this will require editing the registry and many config files moving everything from D: to C:. My crystal ball does not have the resolving power necessary to determine if your extra partition is actually a "recovery partition", which should not be touched.

MS did a tolerable job of shrinking XP for WinFLP: and for "Embedded Windows 7" I had to deal with some cash registers that ran it. They mostly worked. As I vaguely recall, the registers had 2GB of RAM and an 8 GB laptop drive.

There are also smaller versions: The system requirements are extremely small:

Most of that went away with later OS's and BIOS's. The original problem was that the OS had to boot from a partition located in the first 1024 cylinders. That hasn't been an issue for probably 15-20 years.

That's possible, but I fixed those type of problems by not using the MS loader and replacing it with an alternative, usually LILO or GRUB:

Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the planet, I had multiple removable hard disk drives for running various operating systems and performing experiments. These days, it's virtual machines. With the low price of rotating storage, I don't see the need.

BINGO! Yes; a _LOT_ of work. But the template chosen for the website was "supposed" to work with a variety of displays,including "smart" phones; 600x800 default. Well, the ad said "tested" and it clearly was not tested. I was forced to use multiple OSes to host IE5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Opera, Chrome, various Mozilla browsers, and Safari. Then had to bugger the HTML and the css in almost futile attempts to get 600x800 to display reasonably in the various IE browsers with out messing the others. Fortunately, now, IE5 and IE6 usage is low enough to ignore; i dropped Opera and Safari support because they were dogs then and were under multiple and rapid "upgrades". A few observed that my template had used outmoded and/or clumsy code and was so bad it needed a complete re-write. Well,what i have seems to work and i do not have kilobucks to $pend.

• Never seen a hint of a problem when installing either partition; multi-boot works like a charm.

• No mess, no fuss, no cuss.

• Did not see those..just a plain, standard install.

• If you are talking about the crazy wasted partition and other wasted space used in a install to empty HD, AFAIK not there. Layout is like original, sane DOS-tyle form; no offset garbage.

• Yes; that was a trip that caused problems..

• Well, i remember that M$ had a bunch of lies concerning Win98SE:first no more than 500Meg, then no more than 1GB and finally no more than 2Gb. The larger memory killed ordinary video better than 640x480x8bit.

• I still have those numerous HDs, and on rare occasion, need to use one.