Need Help getting dual boot working!

I have spent a couple hours reading how-to's and trying to get my dual boot up and running, but I still can't get it

What I have: XP on a 250gig drive and W7 on a 60gig SSD. When I start my comp it goes straight to W7. I can force it to go to XP if i switch my bios to boot off the XP drive. I don't have a XP CD, but I do have a W7 DVD

What I want: Boot screen with Windows 7 as main with XP in a close second.

Here are some pics that may be helpful:

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go Control Panel>Folder Options>View>uncheck Hide Protected System files, and check Show Hidden Files

check to see that Ntldr, Ntdetect.com, and boot.ini are copied into the root of both drives

restart and report back

Use Easybcd to add a reference to the boot manager for the XP partition/drive. (Looks like you did that already. But you want to edit the XP entry's drive to be D: instead of \Device\HarddiskVolume1)

Reboot and test both OS.

If XP gives the famed "missing NTLDR," you need to edit boot.ini on the XP partition/drive to be correct so it looks in the right place for the XP.

Let me know how it goes and if you need further help editing the boot.ini. Copy and paste the contents of your current boot.ini (using notepad) and I will make suggestions on how to proceed.

Gregrocker: are you saying to do that in W7 or XP? While in W7, I can only find Boot.ini (D"\Windows\pss)

torrentg: your right, I get the boot screen and XP cant load because of the NTDLR problem. Here is a copy of that file
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Respectfully disagree.

Dual boot has its advantages, like accessing each other's locked files when not in use, helpful for many troubleshooting reasons, people with little amount of ram that can't run virtual xp or whatever that is lol for that one app they simply need to run. Many other reasons depending on software you're running and certain tasks you'd like to accomplish, where it makes things generally easier.

I don't have dual boot with XP anymore. I have dual boot 7(x2) though. Also functions as my backup install in case my main goes out for any reason, hardware or anything.

Isn't he able to access his XP files from Win7 (and vice versa) via explorer in the current config, with them both plugged but not dual-booting?

After helping remove a dozen dual boots and XP's from first partition recently here, guys wanting to bail out of XP within hours of dual booting, I thought I should at least ask him to consider. Some of these become a real mess, especially the ones who want their 7 moved onto first partition.

What did you think of his boot.ini file? Doesn't he need all 3 of the boot files in both roots?

I have a lot of things saved on my XP setup(passwords, bookmarks, etc) Yes i could mine through files in order to find them later on, but it makes more sence for me to just dual boot in case I ever need something off my old XP.

It seems to me I just need to fix the path the bootloader uses to find XP, right?

Use Windows Easy Transfer and move it all into 7.