Running two PC's with common keyboard/mouse/monitor

debitcardmayhem

GunJack wrote: »

If I get chance later, I'll try it with two of mine and let you know

I used it on two of my machines last year, you need to set the remote one to have a password otherwise you will need to switch to it to allow the session, which tends to negate the reason for using it. But as someone stated make sure the machine doesn't need a k/b attached. My xp box works without a k/b but I can't remember if I had to change it in the bios:o Age related you know

Lincoln_Imp

victor2 wrote: »

If you're going to go the TeamViewer/vnc route, check that the old machine will actually boot without a keyboard, mouse or monitor connected. You don't want the old "keyboard not detected - press any key to continue" error!

Good point lol

victor2

LucianH wrote: »

Lincoln Imp - I vaguely rembemer reading about Teamviewer for accessing a PC over the internet - I wonder if it has to go via the Internet when the two PC's are connected to the same router. Looks worth investigating.

Just as a follow up to this. Was bored this afternoon so tried it. The two computers in question were connected wirelessly to the same wireless router/cable modem.
Teamviewer worked fine, unplugged the broadband cable and it wouldn't connect. BUT, by changing the general settings to allow an incoming LAN connection, you can connnect through the IP address of the remote computer, without using the broadband.
So it can be done. Playtime over.

LucianH

Thanks all - the teamviewer approach looks promising but if all else fails I can fallback to a KVM switch. However, I've had another thought about overcoming the issue of running some old XP programs on the a new PC. Can anybody see a problem in setting up a dual boot with both XP and Windows 7 64bit?

The PC I'm planning on getting will have a 120gig SSD - if I assign 20gig to the XP partition (along with the small number of programs I'd want to run) which leaves me with 100g for the Windows 7 partition. This assumes that XP will be compatible with the the newer processors and graphics cards.

I've not played with dual booting before so would be interested in any views.

Yorksboy

Hi

Win 7 can run most "XP" programmes in compatibility mode. If you do need/want to keep you old pc, then Remote Desktop ( RDP) works well and is included with XP and 7. Google it for setup- you can share printers/ files etc without any problems. I would recommend that you use ethernet for the connection. Depending on the XP machines network card you can set it up to "wake on LAN".
I use RDP to admin all my office machines. I use it at home and have an iPad app and can operate and wake up machines with my iPad.
Well worth trying.
Good luck
J

victor2

You can run Windows XP Mode if you have Windows 7 Pro or above (not Home version). It works where you can't use compatibility mode, but in my experience is rather slow. I have used it to run an old version of Corel Draw that would only run on XP and not Win 7.

I do dual boot my machine with Linux and Win 7, although they are on separate drives. That's using the grub boot system that comes with Ubuntu Linux, but I would think you can just as easily press the appropriate key during power up to select the drive/partition you want to boot from.