[Question] Best way to share programs on a dual boot system?

[E-66]

I've just recently started playing around with XP (I know, a little late), and I was wondering what the best way is to share programs between it and Win9x in a dual boot system with each OS on its own HD. For whatever reason the idea of sharing programs never even occured to me until I got XP installed and was ready to install my first program... I guess I just assumed I'd install all the programs from the Win9x system on the XP system too, but it all of a sudden dawned on me that I could simply copy all the shortcuts over from my Win9x system and try running them that way.

I have no idea if that's a common way to do it or just plain stupid or what, so that's why I'm posting. I haven't tried all my programs yet, but the 3 or 4 I've tried all worked fine (Winamp, Firefox & Opera, AIM). If it continues on that way the only thing I'd have installed on the NTFS partition is XP itself.

I know I can't do the reverse of what I'm currently doing - that is, install the programs on XP and then copy the shortcuts over to Win9x, because Win9x won't be able to see the NTFS partition, but I'm not smart enough to know if what I'm doing at the moment makes the most sense or not. Maybe I shouldn't even be sharing the programs to begin with? Hell, I don't know - please educate me!

Edited November 2, 2006 by E-66

[jaclaz]

I'm not smart enough to know if what I'm doing at the moment makes the most sense or not. Maybe I shouldn't even be sharing the programs to begin with?

No it does make sense, unfortunately only partially.

You will have to go on a trial one-by-one basis, as some programs are already almost "portable" i.e. they do not need external .dlls or other files but those inside their install drectory and they either do not require Registry entries or they are able to create them, if missing, when the program is run.

For all the other ones, you will need to re-install the apps IN THE SAME place they are already installed under Win9x, but from XP (i.e. overwriting the actual files but making the install routine also create the correct dependencies, links and Registry entries on the "other" OS).

Even this approach that works 100% if done with two identical or however "similar" OS's ( as an example XP and Win2K) could cause in some rather rare case some problem, if the files needed for Win9x (DOS based) are different from those for XP (NT based).

This can be however sometimes resolved by installing the problematic application under one of the OS, making a copy of the folder in which it is installed, re-install it under the other OS and add to this folder the files coming from the previously copied folder that are not already in the newly installed one.

Of course this method will not work if the app uses two different files with the same name under the two different OS's.

Potentially you could also have some problems with apps that "autoupdate" themselves form the net, because the updated files will be those for the OS that is booted when the update takes place.

An (almost completely random, and not backed up by evidence ) estimate would be, as I see it, as follows:

30% of apps, (mostly OpenSource or Freeware) are portable or nearly portable

50% of apps, (mostly COMMERCIAL software) will need the double install in the same place

20% of apps, (again, mostly COMMERCIAL software and expecially antivirii) will need the double install on different places

jaclaz

Edited November 2, 2006 by jaclaz