# Is my thinking about dual booting correct ?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-my-thinking-about-dual-booting-correct/585542
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 15, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-my-thinking-about-dual-booting-correct/585542 "2011-06-15T08:19:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@simple\_homer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simple_homer)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2011, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-my-thinking-about-dual-booting-correct/585542/1 "2011-06-15T08:19:10Z")
I have both Windows 7 and XP installed on different partitions on a new Asus laptop.
My guess is that if the laptop gets a virus on 7, then I can just restart and boot XP and take care of the problem.
In other words, if the laptop gets a virus while I am using 7, will there also be a virus in XP ?
---
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2011, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-my-thinking-about-dual-booting-correct/585542/2 "2011-06-15T08:51:22Z")
In most cases the virus should stay in the main, boot partition.
But, win 7 can write files to an XP partition. XP can write files to a win 7 partition. So, if the virus is sneaky it could spread to another partition or disk.
I’ve never had it happen so far. I dual boot win 7 and xp. I have three sata drives in my tower. xp is on a separate drive from win 7. There’s 4 other partitions where I store music, video, photos etc. I write to those partitions and read from either win 7 or xp.
Virus I’ve got at home or at work have always stayed on the boot partition. But, anything is possible with malware. It could write a trojan. I doubt I’d ever see it since my extra partitions are for multimedia. I never run programs from those drives.