I have 2 hd in my laptop. Once has my corporate xp load the other has my personal xp load. I do some of my programing while at work but my tcl load is in my personal xp load and I rather keep it that way. Sometimes I want to work in my personal xp load and having to reboot is cumbersome. Or sometimes im working in my personal xp and to get an email or work in my corporate xp load and really dont want to reboot. Is there something out there similar to a virtual machine that will let me load my personal xp while running my corporate xp load or the other way around? Installing programs from my corporate load to my personal load or viceversa is not an answer. I know I can just make a virtual machine with my personal load on it but I rather have a load that I can work without having to depend on a virtual machine. Im a bit related to virtual machines, I have vmware installed. I use it to run a linux machine in my system. But i dont think it will do what I wish. Thanks for your help!

for programing it's better to work with a VM in case of system crashes (no rebooting). well i would suggest just use one OS and a VM but it sounds like you don't want too. if it's just emails of files, you can use portable apps that don't have an installer (stand alone) can run from a USB drive.

When running a VM, the RAM & CPU are shared by both the host & guest OS. You're not gonna run a VM very well with just 512MB RAM. Microsoft put out the following chart but unfortunately, they use minimum memory requirements for their calculations rather than recommedned memory. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/do...

I can move files now with no problems, that is trivial. I need to be able to run the other os applications, other solution will not work. Jam, my bad, I need to update the system info. I do run the vm for puppylinuz and backtrack3 in the 512mb. Although BT3 is not too happy in the old system with 512k. I have a new system with 2gb memory and the system is a Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz. Again, I am looking for a solution where I can run the xp load, not just share files. My guess is that is not there other tha a virtual machine load but it is at all possible that the solution I prefer exist and I am not aware...

you could just use one OS and install all apps on it and use user accounts, and fast user switching option. you can limit application access for users accounts. Coola Studios the little out house by the river.

http://www.virtualbox.org

Installing software is not an answer. Both system have to stay independent from the other. That virtual box seems to be the same as the vmware.