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Windows 7 install on XP formatted both disks in machine
Hello
On Friday I attempted to install windows 7 ultimate x64
My existing machine is a XP Pro SP3 machine and it meets the system requirements as per Windows 7 upgrade advisor
I booted from DVD and followed the steps up to selecting where to installl windows 7
This list showed me
Disk 0 Partition 1
Disk 1 Partition 1
Disk 1 Partition 2
Disk 0 is my C drive where my windows xp is installed - 300GB disk
Disk 1 is where is store my files: pictures, music, documents etc - 500GB disk
Partition 2 of Disk 1 is unallocated 9GB
I selected Disk 0 Partition 1
Then selected Disk Options
Format Drive
Clicked Ok to the message about destroying data
And allowed the install to proceed
What i intended / expected to happen was that windows 7 ultimate would be installed on drive C: (Disk 0) and that drive D: (Disk 1) would remain intact and untouched by the process
The Windows 7 install completed successfully
I logged on to my user account, activated my windows 7 copy
I then looked at my disks and what i see is that:
Drive C was formatted and windows 7 was installed there
BUT
The install process formatted drive D and copied the windows XP installation to that drive
So i have lost a lot of data that i did not expect to, and, of course, had not backed up in ages. For now, anyway, thats beside the point.
I then removed the windows 7 DVD from the drive and rebooted the PC
When the disk was removed the machine booted to Windows XP - running from the copy taken earlier on Drive D
However, when i replaced the DVD to try to boot to windows 7 again, it began the installation process from the start
I would really like to understand what happened?
I dont remember selecting a dual boot option during the initial install, but maybe the steps i took led me to something like that by some default
If anyone has any insight that would be great thanks
Best regards
Patrick