Cannot get dual boot: Windows 7 and XP

Hi there,

Thanks for looking.

I have just put together a system for a colleague. It was originally a Windows 7 Utimate on a 250 Gig disk.
I have just added a 1TB disk. At first upon boot up I had the dual boot option of both Windows 7 operating systems and everything was fine. The requirement was to have Windows XP Home installed on the 250gig. I did this while in the new Windows 7 system and rebooted. The dual boot option was no longer available and I could not boot the Windows 7 disk at all. I unplugged the XP disk after trying all the suggestions on Windows 7 Forum related to this problem and booted the 7 disk with the DVD, then carried out the Start up repair several times. It still won't work. I ended up reintalling Windows 7 on the 1TB disk while the 250Gig disk was unplugged.

They both boot now, but only separately and only if one or the other is unplugged. If they are both plugged in the last system to boot is the only one that will boot.

Setting disk priorities in BIOS does not have an effect on this.

The system is as follows:

Stock Case
500 watt PSU
Intel Core Duo Quad Core 775
Gigabite 775 Socket motherboard
1 x 4 Gigabyte Stick DDR3 RAM
1 x 1TB WD HDD
1 x Maxtor 250Gig HDD
Windows 7 Ultimate
XP Home

I will note that the first time I installed 7 it used the whole drive as apartition. This time around it has created a 100 MB partition for system on the 1TB disk. I have a screenshot of the system.



I have tried the DOS methods advised on various threads here including making the disk active actions. I just can't get the system to simply give me the dual boot option upon startup.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thank you very much for reading.

Peace and Regards,

Hi there,

Thanks for loking at this.

If either HDD is plugged in on it's own the respective system will boot and operate without an issue.
I just don't get a boot menu on start up which is what I am trying to obtain. There are no options given. After 'Verifying DMI Pool Data' the sytem simply boots up as normal, depending on which is plugged it.

If I plug in XP and boot, it will have the only active partition and it will be labelled 'C:' and the exact same for Windows 7 HDD if that is plugged in on its own, booted and rebooted after plugging them both in.

In answer to you final post, Originally installed XP from 7, but ended up reinstalling 7 on the 1TB drive without XP HDD plugged in at all. the labels C and D swap depending on which is booted.


I will try thse attrib commands when I get back to the unit.

Thanks very much. :)
All I need is to get the bootmenu on start up.

Hi there
If this is inappropriate just ignore
but seriously with some good FREE Virtual machine software around why even BOTHER to dual boot Windows XP.
Just "Virtualize" it.

When it asks for re-activation the first time just activate by phone. No problems --just tell MS you've installed XP on a new machine --you have to have XP to run some legacy hardware and applications.

If your copy of XP is an OEM copy you *Should* be able to re-activate it as it's still on the same physical machine.

Otherwise you can use XP mode.

Unless you absolutely HAVE to dual boot I'd go the Virtual machine route --the other advantage is just shut it down when you don't need it any more. In General Dual Booting should really be considered a thing of the past. Only if you have a very special type of program which DIRECTLY addresses the hardware do you actually need to boot into a separate physical machine.

vmware player and VBOX both work very well indeed and are FREE. Plenty of tutorials and advice on these Forums for setting up virtual machines.

If you still want to go with the dual boot method --please ignore this post -- but using VM's is not hard at all and worth a try.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi Kaktusoft,

I'll give this a go. That will mean that both will be marked as inactive.

Will try and get back to you.

Thanks again.

Jimbo,

Thanks for the heads up. I have thought of VXP but there are a few apps that simply will not work with 7 and have not had later versions written, as yet.

Thanks :)