Dual Boot Win7 Sees XP Partion

About a week ago I installed the RC on my XP machine to dual boot with XP

I created a 70GB unallocated space right after the XP partition using Gparted and installed the RC in it. When I booted to XP, Window Explorer did not see the RC partition. When I booted to Win 7, Windows Explorer saw the Win 7 partition as C: and the XP partition as G:. It was my understanding that neither should see the other's partition.

Can someone clear this up for me?

Thank you.

jsquareg said:

About a week ago I installed the RC on my XP machine to dual boot with XP

I created a 70GB unallocated space right after the XP partition using Gparted and installed the RC in it. When I booted to XP, Window Explorer did not see the RC partition. When I booted to Win 7, Windows Explorer saw the Win 7 partition as C: and the XP partition as G:. It was my understanding that neither should see the other's partition.

Can someone clear this up for me?

Thank you.

Hi and welcome to sevenforums.
I think the question is why xp (explorer) doesn't see the win 7 partition. While in xp if you go to disk management what does it show for the missing partition. They should be able to see each other.

Hope this helps

Ken

Hi and +1 on the Welcome

I have the same setup with XP as my C drive and partitioned it, the difference was i formated the new partition and gave it a drive letter, then installed Win 7 on the newly formated drive. I can see both drives from either side. If you don't format and give it a drive letter Win 7 will always take the letter C as the main OS. Hope this didn't confuse you more.

Smitty

On my system, the only partition I don't see in Windows Explorer is the boot drive (or system drive as MS puts it) under Windows 7. I have a small 100mb partition dedicated soley for boot files (ntldr, bootmgr, grub etc). << I see this partition under XP and Vista but not in Windows 7 -- no drive letter is assigned.

To the OP:

You should be able to see all partitions with the one exception being if a certain partition was explicitly marked as 'hidden' by your disk partitioning program. On my computer, I have just 1 primary partition (100mb) for boot files, while the rest are all extended logical drives (a total of 7 spanning 3 hard disks).

1Bowtie said:

Hi and +1 on the Welcome

I have the same setup with XP as my C drive and partitioned it, the difference was i formated the new partition and gave it a drive letter, then installed Win 7 on the newly formated drive. I can see both drives from either side. If you don't format and give it a drive letter Win 7 will always take the letter C as the main OS. Hope this didn't confuse you more.

Smitty

Interesting... I've always assumed Win7 will always take the letter C as the main OS regardless of whether or not the partition was pre-formatted.

Mongo said:

On my system, the only partition I don't see in Windows Explorer is the boot drive (or system drive as MS puts it) under Windows 7. I have a small 100mb partition dedicated soley for boot files (ntldr, bootmgr, grub etc). << I see this partition under XP and Vista but not in Windows 7 -- no drive letter is assigned.

To the OP:

You should be able to see all partitions with the one exception being if a certain partition was explicitly marked as 'hidden' by your disk partitioning program. On my computer, I have just 1 primary partition (100mb) for boot files, while the rest are all extended logical drives (a total of 7 spanning 3 hard disks).


Interesting... I've always assumed Win7 will always take the letter C as the main OS regardless of whether or not the partition was pre-formatted.

As mongo pointed out I forgot to tell you to show all files and folders. Its been so long since I didn't have it that way it slipped my mind.
One think I like to tell new'ish users. There is a great section called tutorials. There is so much info there that I dont think you can truely finish reading it. Check it out you will like it.

zigzag3143 said:

Hi and welcome to sevenforums.
I think the question is why xp (explorer) doesn't see the win 7 partition. While in xp if you go to disk management what does it show for the missing partition. They should be able to see each other.

Hope this helps

Ken

I should have thought of that! XP's Disk Management shows the Win 7 partion just where it should be. I guess XP's Windows Explore doesn't like having 7 around. :)

No big deal, I was just curious.

1Bowtie said:

Hi and +1 on the Welcome

I have the same setup with XP as my C drive and partitioned it, the difference was i formated the new partition and gave it a drive letter, then installed Win 7 on the newly formated drive. I can see both drives from either side. If you don't format and give it a drive letter Win 7 will always take the letter C as the main OS. Hope this didn't confuse you more.

Smitty

Nope, It doesn't confuse me at all. It is what I expected.

Thanks.

I didn't have time to read thru this entire thread, but in case it wasn't brought up, it seems like you are always better off to install OSes in order of age (Windows 98, then Windows XP, then Windows 7) because newer versions of Windows recognize the older ones, but obviously the older ones don't know about the newer ones... the only way they even possibly could would be due to Service Packs.

In your case, you already had Windows XP installed. So, the above doesn't really apply. But, you should keep this in mind if you were to wipe your system clean and re-install and wanted both Windows XP and 7 on it.

That said, you still need to carefully consider how you want to handle the actual drive letters.