Win XP and Win 7 dual boot

fobose · 11 May 2010 at 22:41

Is it possible to have a dual boot of Windows XP and Windows 7, using seperate hard drives?

My brother has a 320GB WD and a new 500GB WD hard drive. I was thinking of installing XP on the 320GB and 7 on the 500GB.

trebormint · 11 May 2010 at 23:04

Shouldn't be a problem.

I'd load xp first.

Tripnologist · 12 May 2010 at 15:00

I did it for a bit on my work PC when I moved over to W7... until I realised I had absolutely no reason to actually keep XP on there at all.

As above, Install XP, then install Win7. If you run into any problems, can probably be fixed with easybcd.

robinbredin · 12 May 2010 at 15:24

Is it possible to have a dual boot of Windows XP and Windows 7, using seperate hard drives?

Im doing that now. Though, i spend more time in XP, than I do in Win 7. I loaded Win 7 first, but you do it the other way if you want. See the link below on how to do it,

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html?ltr=D

fobose · 12 May 2010 at 17:51

Thanks for the replies everyone. Perhaps a silly question, but I presume that XP will be the C drive, and W7 will end up being another drive letter?

Tripnologist · 12 May 2010 at 18:06

When I had my XP/W7 dual boot, I think they both took C.

MotherMayI · 12 May 2010 at 19:33

.. Why would you want to do that?

fobose · 12 May 2010 at 19:41

Tripnologist said:
When I had my XP/W7 dual boot, I think they both took C.

Excellent, that'll make life easier.

MotherMayI said:
.. Why would you want to do that?

??

MotherMayI · 12 May 2010 at 21:22

I just don't understand why you would want to dual boot XP and 7.

fobose · 12 May 2010 at 22:27

My brother is very in to his electronics and quite a bit of his hardware is not supported by Windows 7. He currently uses his XP netbook for most things but its a pain to work on being so small.

Hotwired · 12 May 2010 at 22:43

Is there a particular benefit in setting up a dual boot over two separate hard drives like this?

I've got two separate XP installations on separate hard drives but normally only #1 is used. But by pressing F8 during POST I can instead boot from #2.

Doesn't require a countdown screen every single startup and neither interferes with the other.

fobose · 12 May 2010 at 22:46

That does actually sound like a better solution in the event that the XP install b0rks/hard drive failure he will still be able to boot from the w7 drive without needing to faff about.

I think I may do that, and only have 1 drive connected at a time as I install the OS on each. Thanks for the suggestion - I will test to make sure he gets the boot order screen before I go ahead.

JoHubb · 25 Aug 2010 at 09:58

Sorry to resurrect this oldish thread but it applies to my set up.

I run XP off Drive#1 installed first and used for over 2 years. A month or so ago I installed Win7 on Drive #2 (retail version - fresh install - not upgrade). During the post routine I get a choice to boot Win 7 or 'an earlier version of Windows'. As most of my active stuff is still on XP I use the arrow key to choose the earlier version. This all worked perfectly until a few days ago.

Now when I try to select the 'earlier version of Windows' the arrow up key does nothing and after 30 secs the system boots up in Win7. I have tried Num Lock on and off, Page Up, without success. I have tried F8 during the sequence - no response. I cannot even get into the BIOS (Delete during boot).

I am at a loss what to do now. Can anyone help?

Thanks

John

apatia77 · 25 Aug 2010 at 10:36

Of course you can dual boot and have different operating systems installed on different HDDs.

JoHubb · 25 Aug 2010 at 11:09

Thanks but you missed the point. I've been dual booting for a month - no problems. All of a sudden I cannot.

John

robinbredin · 25 Aug 2010 at 12:44

Sorry to resurrect this oldish thread but it applies to my set up.

I run XP off Drive#1 installed first and used for over 2 years. A month or so ago I installed Win7 on Drive #2 (retail version - fresh install - not upgrade). During the post routine I get a choice to boot Win 7 or 'an earlier version of Windows'. As most of my active stuff is still on XP I use the arrow key to choose the earlier version. This all worked perfectly until a few days ago.

Now when I try to select the 'earlier version of Windows' the arrow up key does nothing and after 30 secs the system boots up in Win7. I have tried Num Lock on and off, Page Up, without success. I have tried F8 during the sequence - no response. I cannot even get into the BIOS (Delete during boot).

I am at a loss what to do now. Can anyone help?

Thanks

John

Have you got easybcd installed in your Win 7 drive, if so, I would check that XP has not been corrupted. Or, you can download Oracle Virtual Box or VMware on your Win 7 drive, and run XP in Virtual Mode, and still run your XP programs. I use Oracle Virtual Box to run Mint 9 in Virtual mode with Win 7.

JoHubb · 25 Aug 2010 at 14:05

robinbredin said:
Have you got easybcd installed in your Win 7 drive, if so, I would check that XP has not been corrupted

.

No, I don't have this but the problem has been sorted at least for the present. I just reset the CMOS. I have a feeling that the problem was keyboard related as I couldn't get into BIOS during the post routine with DEL or F8.

robinbredin said:
Or, you can download Oracle Virtual Box or VMware on your Win 7 drive, and run XP in Virtual Mode, and still run your XP programs. I use Oracle Virtual Box to run Mint 9 in Virtual mode with Win 7.

This is a neat idea and I've wondered about running XP in virtual mode. I am told that not all programs run well in it, especially games and simulations. Anyhow, the problem has gone away, hopefully for good.

Thanks for your help.

John