windows 7 wont boot

Soldato
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hi

im having a prob getting my windows 7 rc disk to boot, im running xp 32 bit at the mo and have kept a spare 250gb on my hd to install windows 7, i have set my cd rom drive as the primary boot option in my bios, but everytime it just load up my xp, when i go into my computer and right click the drive and autoplay it comes up saying, "installation disk isnt compat with your version of windows to upgrade you need the correct installtion disk"

Can i duel boot a 32bit and 64 bit OS? im sure my mo board is compat with 64bit this is it

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-357-AS

any ideas?
 
Yes you can dual boot 32 and 64, what's happening is that it thinks you want to upgrade XP 32 to Win7 64 and that wont work, what you need to do is create a partition on your hard drive that you want to install win 7 onto, then boot from the cd, a blank screen should appear with press any key top boot from cd, press that then follow instructions on screen to install a fresh copy of Win 7 on the partition you made earlier.
 
o right i see, i tell you wat i did, i just reinstalled my xp about a week ago i have a 500gb hd so when i installed xp i did it on 1 half of the hd so i have 250gb free still, how do i get it to install on the 250gb unused hd space? do i just go into diak mangement and right click the empty space and create partition?

thanks again
 
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Partition magic will do the trick, google it for a free trial download. It will allow you to partition the drive into two but then you will need to boot from your DVD drive still to install the OS. You should have been seeing a black screen saying "Press any key to boot from DVD" if you set-up the boot order correctly.

I have a feeling the media is a fault or the drive is. It should not have booted directly in to XP if you set the boot order.
 
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the thing is i want to put it on the spare 250gb i left for it i have got xp partioned on half my hd and want to put windows 7 on the other unsued 250gb on my hd
 
the thing is i want to put it on the spare 250gb i left for it i have got xp partioned on half my hd and want to put windows 7 on the other unsued 250gb on my hd

So, you have already partitioned the drive? Do you see two drives in "My Computer"? At least, that's what your above post suggests. If not, get the software (Partition Magic) to do it for you or you will lose the data stored for XP.

I still think you have a problem with the media(Windows 7 DVD) though.
 
there is only one drive showing up my local C drive which is showing 250gb, sorry for sounding confusing what i mean is when i installed xp i installed it on a 250gb partition which leaves me with 250gb of un allocated space, i want to install windows 7 on the 250gb of unallocated space but was not to sure on what to do, can i not use winodows disk managment?
 
if you need to there is a linux tool called gparted that can do it too - you could use a livecd of your chosen distribution to do it, BUT you shouldnt need to do that as the win7 installation routine lets you create a partition in unallocated space itself.. make sure you select the advanced option from installation. Everything you need to do should be available once you can boot from the win7 cd.
 
If the system isn't booting from the DVD you'll not get far.

this.

Got to be the first thing to check. Win7 doesn't require you to 'press any key to boot from CD' it just boots.

If you've set your boot order in your BIOS correctly and it's still not booting to the win7 installation then I reckon the cd is fudged my friend.

hope it helps.
 
You don't need any 3rd party partitioning utilities, the partitioning tool in Windows Setup will handle creating a new partition from the free space fine. As said already you just need to be able to boot from the DVD.

Slightly off-topic and over-complicating things, but I never understand why people suggest changing the boot order in the bios, when you only need to boot from DVD once and have a temporary boot menu from which you can choose it (usually F12 during post). That's a much more elegant solution than going into the bios, changing the boot order, booting from DVD, going back into the bios, changing the order again and booting from HD.
 
thanks for the responce guys, i think it must be the cd then, my boot priority it set to cd rom 1st so i no thats all right, the thing is when i put the cd in and go into my computer the cd drive see's it as windows 7 cos the windows 7 icon is there, i guess maybe the boot function on the cd might not have burnt properly, i cant even re-download it as they stopped it a week or so ago,

i take it im screwed then

thanks for your help guys
 
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