I am currently running Liquid 7.2 on another machine, and very soon wish to install and get to grips with Media Composer.

On the understanding that Liquid in particular does not generally like to share the same machine with other applications... will a dual boot installation work to enable me to run both Liquid and MC on the same machine without conflicting problems?

I have never attempted installing two seperate operating systems before. Will I be able to have Liquid running as it is on XP, and install W7 on the same machine for running Media Composer? Is it something that should even be considered, or should I bite the bullet and eliminate Liquid once and for all (though I really would like to keep it installed for emergency editing until I have mastered the basics of MC).

Appreciate any advice, particularly from those experienced in running Liquid and MC on the same machine/seperate OS.

You can do that in several ways. You can partition your boot drive so that you have XP and LE on one partition and W7 and MC on another partition and then just select the partition you want to run. Another option is to put your boot drive into a removeable caddy and plug in the drive you want to boot from, one with Liquid and one with MC. I would prefer the second arrangement. The third option is to install a second boot drive on your system for MC and just select which drive the system boots from in a startup menu created in the boot.ini file. But yes, any of those would be a good way to go. I have three boot drives on my system. One for general stuff, one for Liquid and one for MC. They are all in removeable caddies with power switches on them. I just need to turn on the power switch for the drive I want to boot from and turn off the others. Works very well.

I am running a dual boot system & both programs are running fine

Excellent - thank you for the replies.

 

Then there is the way I do it - I have Liquid on the same drive as MC and both programs run fine.   Not at the same time, of course.

But not recommended because of the shared pixie registration files. Removing one of the programs is likely to damage the installation of the other.