Windows 7: Dual Booting but Want to Replace XP with Windows 7

Sorry to diminish your hopes of the upgrade solution but...

You cant upgrade a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit, Period. You'll have to just plainly delete xp, and install Windows 7 from the blank partition. Good news is that Windows 7 supports setting dual booting and partition editing out-of-box. Good luck to you.

i agree with this 100%.

Windows 7 has a great and easy partition edititing tool in the setup. I highly recommend letting the Windows 7 installer do this job, and will automatically set up dual boot for you.

Let me know if you have any trouble.

-D

CBKIT- Let me see if I understand you correctly here...

you have Vistie on hardrive A (bigger/better) and Windows 7 on Harddrive B. you want to delete Vista, and manually move Windows 7 to A, eliminating the need for Hd B.

If Im right here...

You dont need to worry about which letter each drive is associated with, this should be irrelevent.

First, completely wipe Harddrive A, or at least start out with a decent sized partition thats bigger than B. Use your tool to COPY all the Windows 7 files to the better hard drive.

Now physically unplugg B; this is easiest.

Run the Windows 7 repair utility by using the install CD you should have made/obtained when you installed Windows 7. This will re-write the boot sectors in the registry and bios settings, and let you use the new hard drive.

you will have to play around with some bios settings through this ordeal.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes or went.

-D

Hi Guys

Well it's been a while hasn't it? lolol

At the moment I still have Windows XP Pro 32-bit installed on one partition and Vista Ultimate 64-bit on another. Both these partitions reside on a two-disk RAID Mirror setup - 70Gb's for XP and 70Gb's for Vista.

I didn't proceed before as I decided to wait until I could buy the retail version of Windows 7 which I now have and I would like to install the 64-bit version over the XP OS and dual boot for the time being between Vista and Windows7

At the moment I still have the 2 Boot Managers installed - Acronis and Easy-BCD

Eventually I feel sure I will move over fully to Windows 7.

So.........

Just some questions please: -

1. Has anything changed with the Retail versions regarding what has been said with it's installation?
2. Will it see my RAID partitions straight out of the box?
3. Which Boot Manager should I uninstall before installing, if any?
4. Will the Retail version allow me to select the Windows XP partiton, format it, install Windows 7 on to it and then still retain a "dual Boot" menu to allow me to boot into either Vista or Windows 7? Or will I still have to "Unhide" the Vista partition as mentioned before?
5. Is it relevant to state that when I started dual booting XP and Vista, XP was installed first?
6. Anything else I need to take into consideration before I proceed?

Sorry I have not updated my thread since posting before but I felt it would be too much of a phaff to keep reinstalling beta after beta and decided to wait for the final retail version.

Thanks in anticipation

roz

Anyone please?

TIA

roz

Hi rozel,

Easybcd isn't a boot manager - it is a GUI for bcdedit - no problem there.

I don't know what Acronis boot manager is - does it pop up and offer the choice of which o/s to boot into - and it's own little partition with your backup images?

If so, it is probably written to the mbr.

Installing 7 by booting the dvd and doing clean install to XP partition will overwrite Acronis boot manager.

7 bootmanager will be in control.

You could format the XP partition during install and go ahead.

You may need to add Vista to 7 bcd after - very easy.

That's it. Should all be fine.

Thanks for that - most helpful and reassuring.......................

Well as you would expect, knowing Microsoft, things have not worked out as planned.

First I decided to resize my XP partition using Partition Manager Personal 10 - to free up up some space which I could donate to the Vista os. This was extremely successful and after checking things out by then re booting into both os'es separately to ensure they both could, I then rebooted using my Windows 7 DVD. I followed the instructions implicitly.

I eventually selected "Custom (advanced)" after selecting the x64 version to install and after trying to find the "format" options, I eventually found these by selecting Drive Options (Advanced) which revealed these. I selected the XP partition and clicked on ok, expecting it to take some while to format, however it quickly moved on to the next options, revelaed in a list.

This list started with "Copying Windows Files" and a green tick ensued almost immediately and it then moved on to "Expanding Windows Files", where it stuck on (0%)... for about 3/4 minutes whereupon it stated the following: -

Windows cannot install required files. The file may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation.

Error Code 0x80070017

So I ejected the DVD after cancelling out and rebooted whereupon my worst fears were encountered - the Boot Manager files had been overwritten or perhaps more specifically been deleted. The following message ensued after my usual RAID screens appeared after POST: -

MBR Error 3
BootMgr is missing
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart

So I first attemted to repair using the Windows 7 DVD repair option - no good - message something like this repair option cannot repair this OS.

So I tried again using the Windows Vista DVD and selected the startup repair and voila after it completed, I rebooted and I was immediately booted into Vista.

Presumably the boot manager doesn't display because now there is only one entry, for Vista?

Anyhow after checking things out, my XP partition was formatted, must have been a really quick format lol! and could be read ok - diskmanager revealing it to be healthy albeit devoid of data.

So I have my RAID partitions still intact, can boot straight into Vista and have an empty 50Gb partition ready to accept Windows 7.

So at least a stage further has been reached.

But why the initial error? Is it because my Disc is corrupt/dirty etc? I had these errors with worn discs in the past but didn't think a new disc would give such an error.

When the option to Expand Windows Files was started it stayed on 0%, never moved from this and several times I could here my DVD Rom Drive starting up - the drive light on the rom drive initially started to flash extremely quickly as if it was being read from but eventually just before the error message was displayed it was constantly on and not flickering at all.

I give this information in the hope that my problem can be diagnosed - I feel a lot happier knowing that the MBR can after all be repaired with my Vista Install DVD - but lets say a further attempt to install Windows 7 is made, will this be deleted once more if the install aborts again for some reason?

Anyways please help me diagnose my installation problem

Cheers

roz

Please post a screenshot of Disk Management window.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...en-forums.html

That issue is sometimes caused by a corrupt dvd - or a bad burn. As it is a retail dvd - not very likely - did you try the other bit version dvd and see if you get the same error?

Another way may be to copy the install.wim and boot.sdi to the HD and set it up as a ramdisk option . Or use Imagex to extract the install.wim to the intended partition , issue bcdboot command , mark as active, restart and it should install quickly.

Then switch back the Active flag to Vista partition and create the 7 boot files on Vista partition.

Thanks - I appreciate your invovlment and interest so very quickly

Screen attached - not sure why this will help though? No I didn't try the other DVD - I'd rather not

Edit......

Could it be that both partitions are Primary and the former XP partition is "Active" ?

roz

Just to see what we are dealing with.

You want to install it on D I presume?

Any reaction to the suggestions in my previous post?