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Can anyone tell me how to install two operating system on one PC such that both operating systems can be used at the same time?

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I smell hackintosh here. Are you trying to run both windows and osx in your PC? – deddebme Aug 21 '09 at 16:36
no basically i went through an article regarding this, but couldnt get much idea. so lukd for sum further help – Himjones Aug 21 '09 at 18:36
so you are saying how to run two PC OS together, right? I notice you have the OSX tag, that's why I thought you want to talk about hackintosh. – deddebme Aug 22 '09 at 3:57
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3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote

You can use a virtual machine to do this, and allow it to operate in seamless mode.

VirtualBox is a nice cross-platform, free application which allows you to do this. You can emulate nearly every operating system under one-another. The full list of compatible guest operating systems can be found here.

The following is Mac OS X emulating Windows XP in seamless mode:

VirtualBox Seamless Mode Example

And the following is Mac OS X again, but emulating Mandriva Linux:

VirtualBox Seamless Mode Example

While you can use seamless mode, I find it much easier to just switch between them using Fullscreen mode... Although this depends largely on the purpose of the virtual machine.

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And VirtualBox is free, too. – Thilo Aug 21 '09 at 13:40
If you don't mind paying, or want support (but don't expect much support from Parallels - their support sucks), the commercial alternatives are: <a href="vmware.com/products/fusion/">VMWare</a>; (more stable and dependable), and <a href="parallels.com/">Parallels Desktop</a> (very fast and tons of features, but more fragile and terrible support). – The Tentacle Aug 21 '09 at 15:50
Sorry - assumed we could use HTML in comments: parallels.com vmware.com/products/fusion – The Tentacle Aug 21 '09 at 15:52
can i run windows xp and windows 2003 with the help of this application – Himjones Aug 22 '09 at 8:53
Yes you can. You can install either OS first, then emulate the other one by installing it into a virtual machine. Then start up the virtual machine, and set it to "Seamless Mode". – Breakthrough Aug 23 '09 at 6:09
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up vote 1 down vote

You cannot use use two Operating systems at the exact same time without some virtual environment.

You can install two and use them independently of each other, however. For example, you can do a clean install of Windows XP and partition your hard drive into two partitions during the install. The Install Windows Vista or Windows 7 or some flavor of Linux to the second partition. This will allow you to choose which OS to start during each boot.

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since there are many virtualization methods, it would be good to know which operating systems you have in mind.

the various methods are not equally suitable for each possible combination.

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