Hi! I'd like to test Windows 7 on a PC which runs XP as the primary OS. Can I dual boot? Some of the people I talked to, although no computer geniuses, say that their XP was erased from their HDD.
It's important to me because I've got many important databases on my XP, so if the whole HDD gets formated, I'm into troubles...
HI thebog and welcome to the forums,
You can dual boot with relative ease, providing that you have enough room to make a second partition or a second HDD to install on, personally I have a second HDD for my Windows 7 install and have Vista on the other. Once you have installed you may have to repair your boot screen to include XP and change it back to the default OS, this can be done using EasyBCD with ease and if you have any problems there are plenty of people on this forum that will help you out.
Another thing you will notice once you have installed Windows 7 and booted it for the first time, when you look in Computer your XP partition will not be visible but don't panic it's still there, all you have to do is go to disk management and assign a drive letter and you will now be able to access your documents through Windows 7, also note you will need to aply any changes in EasyBCD after assigning your drive letter to your XP partition.
If you have a look around the forum you will find lots of XP dual boot threads started with answers to allot of questions, good luck.
im doing the same thing. i installed windows 7 on a computer with xp. If you do a clean install on an empty drive or empty partition you will have no problem. You wont loose XP unless you upgrade it or install it on the same partition. The only thing is my xp boot loader stayed in tact. which didnt see 7. I tried so many things to load up win7 into the boot loader. i ended up having to get a 3rd party program which installed the boot loader and let me customize it. it found the drive with no problem (which i was having trouble with trying to edit the loader in xp)
good luck. and it is possible.
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