Dual Boot Issues: Windows 7 and XP


  1. Posts : 5
    7 64bit
       #1

    Dual Boot Issues: Windows 7 and XP


    I've gone through pages and pages of threads and many different sites to no avail. I have a factory installed Windows 7 64bit Samsung laptop. I have a single drive with an open partition ~200GB for Windows XP. With boot options set to optical drive, I have tried three different XP disks and all of them go through the disc loadup, but upon completion of "Starting Windows" the blue screen goes away, it flashes a black screen, Windows 7 load up screen flashes for a second and it once again says press any key to boot from CD.

    I have tried disabling the legacy OS boot, AHCI, as well as deleting the 18GB recovery partition. Nothing is working.

    Please tell me I am missing something! Thank you for your help in advance.
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  2. Arc
    Posts : 35,373
    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview 64-bit
       #2

    Welcome aboard :)

    Have you followed the Option Two of the tutorial Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP ?
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  3. Posts : 8,375
    W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
       #3

    Hello sc350z Welcome to the Seven Forums!

    When first going to install XP did you enter the bios setup and set the optical drive as the first boot device? The alternative method would be pressing the assigned F key like F4, F8, F11, or F12 depending on which key is used to bring up the boot device menu. Once the setup files are copied over to the drive the restart automatically boots from the main drive.

    As for not seeing an immediate set up of XP the old version lacks native sata support and you often need to press the F6 option when first going to run the XP installer to load Sata/RAID controller drivers from a 3 1/2" floppy or cd. Your laptop there may not have the onboard sata controllers that allow the XP installer to auto detect a sata drive.

    As for setting up a dual boot of 7 with XP you will want to read over the guide for this noting Option Two for installing XP after 7. That will explain the need to correct the 7 boot information once XP is on. Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP
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  4. Posts : 8,375
    W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
       #4

    Shouldn't have to disable anything! You want the main drive available once the setup files are complete and the first restart is then seen to continue on with the installation.

    When using the boot device menu the drive selected won't be set as the default in the boot order but instead is booted from for that one session. The option for bringing up the boot device menu is seen when first turning the laptop on the initial post screen along the bottom of the display as well as the key assigned for entering the bios setup.

    Once you get so far along with the XP install even if that should still fail the boot entries for 7 may have already been overwritten in favor of XP's. This is why following Option Two in the guide is important.
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  5. Posts : 5
    7 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #5

    Thank you all for the replies. I did in fact follow step 2, and had the optical device boot before HDD. The black "press any key to boot from CD" popped up and then the blue screen with Windows pre-setup appeared, but once loading was done, I never made it to the "Welcome to Setup" screen (substep 3 under Step 2).

    I have a Samsung QX410-S02 and it appears my harddrive, Samsung HM641JI, is SATA. I'm guessing that is where the problem is, however I do not get the "Setup cannot find any hard disks on your computer" error message from the guide entitled "How to Load SATA Drivers in Windows XP Setup on your Dual Boot PC with Vista or Windows 7." I also do not have a floppy disk drive that the guide says is needed, but I will try with a CD as per above advice.
      My Computer

  6.    #6

    It's much easier at this late date with XP to virtualize it from within Win7 using VMWare, Virtual Box or Virtual Player freeware, or XP Mode in Ultimate/Pro versions.

    If you must have the Dual Boot then you'll have to slipstream the XP SATA storage drivers for your hardware (if any even exist) into the XP CD: SATA Drivers - Slipstream into Windows XP CD
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  7. Posts : 5
    7 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #7

    It appears that XP drivers are not available for download anywhere. Unfortunately, virtual boxes won't allow me to run the games I wanted to in the dual boot. Thank you all for your assistance.
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  8. Posts : 8,375
    W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
       #8

    Surprizingly apart from where you couldn't at times in Vista the 32bit 7 provides the best backward compatibility to games that were written with only XP in mind! When testing what would go on 7 back with the beta and RC builds titles that failed to even install on Vista regardless of what you tried went right onto the 32bit 7 builds!

    Other old titles here are running on the 8 Customer Preview since they don't require DX9 while others won't there due to OpenGL issues from incompatibility. 99% of the games you would run on XP will go on and run on the 64bit 7! Only a few stubborn titles would require the 32bit 7 being limited to the 32bit to start with.

    While beta testig was still ongoing I still had a Vista/XP dual boot at the time just to run some of things incompatible with Vista. By the time the RC came along however the two previous versions said their good byes!
    (And yet who has to reinstall XP or Vista for others at times? Have to set the old Vista case again which means another clean install of the previous)
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