I just got a new laptop with windows 7 and of course compatibility issues with some of my older games. I was wondering if it would be possible to install windows XP onto a partition with the recovery discs that came with my old laptop? Or on a external hard drive?

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That would be illegal unless you use the key from your old laptop and no longer use your old laptop.

Depending on your version of Win 7, you might have a free option to install xp-mode, which is an XP pro running in a virtual machine.
The Win 7 ultimate version have it included as an option - no extra charge.

If you are running some of the other win 7 versions, you might have to pay for an XP pro license, unless you have one that you are not using somewhere else.

Anyway, if you have sufficient RAM (4+ GB), I think it is a better option, compared to installing XP and dual boot (with a very few exceptions).

I have tried out the XP mode on my Lenovo (2Ghz dual core with 4Gig of pc 6200 ram) and found it to be very slow. I have set up a dual boot and XP works far far better like that. For dual booting, you will need easybcd to sort the boot menu out, its free to use - http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Depending on your version of Win 7, you might have a free option to install xp-mode, which is an XP pro running in a virtual machine.
The Win 7 ultimate version have it included as an option - no extra charge.

If you are running some of the other win 7 versions, you might have to pay for an XP pro license, unless you have one that you are not using somewhere else.

Anyway, if you have sufficient RAM (4+ GB), I think it is a better option, compared to installing XP and dual boot (with a very few exceptions).

Hmm, I will look into the xp-mode. Thanks for the tip :)

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