How do I set up dual boot OS's?

HummuH1 · 25 Sep 2007 at 09:40

Hi guys, hope you can help.

I'm buying a new system that will have Vista HP 32 pre-installed. I would like to transfer my old HDD with XP installed on it to my new system as a 2nd HDD.

I would like the option to select at start up which OS it loads.

Can I do this if the two OS's are on separate drives?

Is there a guide/program anywhere that will help me set this up?

Thanks for your help.

eXor · 25 Sep 2007 at 09:45

I'm pretty sure that you will run into problems moving XP like that because of hard coded drive letter paths in the registry. Are you are planning to reinstall XP?

HummuH1 · 25 Sep 2007 at 10:54

I hadn't planned on re-installing, but everything I've read seems to suggest I'll have to, but that's ok.

Would I be better have them as separate partitions on the same HDD or with one on a 2nd HDD?

eXor · 25 Sep 2007 at 11:06

Actually, it may be possible to keep your existing XP on the 2nd hard drive. If you are willing to use a non windows boot manager. You would use grub to boot ( possibly from a usb stick, so that you don't touch your drives ) and it would swap the position of the drives dynamically. Windows would see disk 1 as disk 2 or disk 2 as disk one and boot accordingly.

You could set it up so that they can't see each other. Don't know what would happen to the drive letters if you allow them to see each other.