Windows 7: Preserving Dual Boot (Win7 and XP) with new motherboard?

First I'd like to say thanks to the folks who have helped me so far with this process. The machine is running 64-bit Windows 7 and 32-bit XP. Finally about a week ago I bought a new mobo, processor and Ram.



When I booted the computer for the first time, I let the machine boot to Windows 7, and I was fully expecting the OS to crash or error out in some serious fashion. But it didn't. It didn't even prompt me for the Windows 7 installation disk. It spent about 10 or 15 minutes installing new drivers, though. After the OS finished, I installed the drivers for the motherboard. And everything is behaving swimingly. The system is noticeably faster than the one it replaced, which is always fun.

Once I was satisfied the system was running Windows 7 normally, I tried booting to XP. Problems. As soon as its splash screen came up, I realized the mouse wasn't being recognized, then I saw that neither was the keyboard. At this point, I should mention that with the old system I had a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse combo. I ended up retiring this set for another Logitech wireless set because the new motherboard doesn't support PS-2 connectors for the mouse and kb, the way the original mb did. So I went with USB, in this case, a set in which both the kb and mouse share the same USB connector. Seems to me there shouldn't be a problem, but for whatever reason there was. Tomorrow, I'm thinking about dragging out an old PS-2 mouse and KB, attach them to the system using PS-2 to USB adapters and see if I can get it to respond when booting to XP. But I'm not holding out much hope.

If I have to reinstall XP, this is gonna kill the boot manager that Windows 7 set up, isn't it? To bring the Windows 7 boot manager back, does this mean I'll have to reinstall Windows 7 too?

*sigh* Why can't things just be simple for a change.

In case you're wondering, I've gone with an AMD Phenom X4 840 CPU and an ASRock 890GX motherboard. It's running 8 gigs of DDR3 PC1600 RAM. It has an onboard Radion 4200-series graphics processor, but the resolutions available with the processor are lame so I'm not able to run at my flat screen's preferred resolution. I mean, in this day and age of the ubiquitous 1920x1080 flat screen, who in their right mind would ignore this resolution? AMD/ATi apparently. I have a nice graphics card in another machine that does support this rez, and I guess it's gonna get pressed into service in the new machine. Or maybe I'll buy a new one; haven't made up my mind yet.

The old mb is still under warranty and still has a lot of life left to it -- an ASUS M4A78 Pro. It has AM2/AM3 socket capability and is running an AMD Athlon X2 7850 CPU, but it has problems. I'm sending it into ASUS for warranty repair/replacement, and then it will be put back into service in another machine that's currently running an eight yo mb/processor, due for retirement. I plan to run multi OSes on it too. Most likely XP and Ubuntu Linux (currently only Ubuntu is installed). I also want a small DOS partition -- less than a gig will be plenty -- so I can run some cool old DOS programs I still have. I have a legit copy of Quarterdeck's DeskView X -- like about a dozen 3.5" floppies, some of which I think have probably gone bad by now -- but I'd really like to get DVX up and running, just to play around with it some.

Okay, well, that's about it. If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd be happy getting your feedback.

sounds to me like your 7 version is a full license and xp is an oem one use version.

What happens if you boot to XP with the CD in?

To my knowledge it shouldnt effect the boot order with 7.

If your that worried you could always install XP to a virtual machine, and just run it from window 7

Booting an already-installed Windows 7 system on a new platform is always a gamble - you were fortunate in that it worked in your case.

Thing is, with XP it's practically a given that it won't accept such a drastic hardware change. It's 10 years old and not nearly as flexible or resistant as the Vista/7 family. (Besides, XP doesn't have an entire winsxs folder or driver database from which to grab new drivers to auto-install.)

However, you could back up the MBR, then reinstall XP fresh (into the existing XP partition, not altering it or creating a new one), then restore the MBR from the backup. This would leave the dualboot exactly as it is now, except that XP will start up now because it's a new install.

If you want to go this route it's very important to first mark the XP partition as active and the 7 partition as inactive. Then boot from the XP setup disc and perform the install, taking care to overwrite the correct partition.
After that, you would then set the 7 partition active and the XP partition inactive again - it doesn't matter if you do this before or after reverting the MBR.

To back up the MBR itself, there are various freeware tools. One I'm personally very fond of is made by Microsoft itself and is called Sector Inspector (which actually can back up and restore any sector or range of sectors on a disk, not just sector 0).

Download it here: Download: Sector Inspector (SecInspect.exe) - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

If you feel up to trying this route and/or have any questions before you proceed, I'll help you every step of the way.

Speaking of making things simple, had you done that from the beginning, you may not be having any issues now. While it's always preferable to do a clean install on new hardware, Windows 7 is more flexible for changing hardware, and at most, should only need a repair to be booting again. As for XP, if you had it virtualized, it would work just fine after the swap, as VMs are designed to be portable. Dual-booting is a dead tech, and adds more variables to a system in situations like this.

You need to SysPrep XP on the old hardware, image it onto newly deleted XP partition then add it from Windows 7 using EasyBCD, or boot Paragon Adaptive Restore CD on the new hardware pointed at XP to remove all drivers, HID and SID so it will start up like a new computer. SysPrep to move HD to another computer

Absent this, you'll need to run a XP Repair Install on the new hardware, which if it will run will steal the boot from Windows 7 requiring it to be added back using EasyBCD in XP as shown in Method Two here: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP .

Or start Windows 7 again by marking it Active then running Startup Repair 3 Separate Times , then install EasyBCD to add XP. EasyBCD 2.0.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

Nope, I bought XP at Costco.

Thanks for all the responses, guys. Geez just a few messages, and I'll likely have to spend a few days studying up on all the info they contain. I dunno about this whole VM business though. Sounds to me as if it might be fine for a fresh install. But in my case I wanted to keep all my old XP settings. I installed Windows 7 on a new hard drive into an older system. And I want to keep the old XP not only for all the software I've installed over the years, but also because Windows 7 no longer supports a few devices that I own and use.

Feel free to ask back any questions to decide how you want to proceed.

I'd probably try booting XP CD to do the Repair Install first, then start Windows 7 back up to add XP from 7 which is easier.

Keep in mind that easiest of all is to use separate HD's booted via the BIOS, so that you don't have to add one or the other using EasyBCD - just set preferred HD to boot first, or boot the other one using one-time BIOS Boot menu key.

Well here I go again, resurrecting a stale thread. But I thought it was worth a final comment for clarity's sake. Reading back through my posts, I realized I may not have been as clear as I should have. What I did in this machine was, I bought a separate hard drive for Windows 7. So when I installed Windows 7, it went onto an empty drive and didn't have to do any funny tweaks to XP's "C" drive. And because I installed Windows 7 into an existing XP system, the boot manager that Windows 7 installed has worked fine for both OSes. No worries, really. And, as I mentioned in another thread, Windows 7 handled the mobo switch with ease, and much to my surprise, even XP survived the switch with a minimum of hiccups.