Windows 7: Dual boot winxp & win 7

I've got 2 drives with OS on them - my old one with winxp, and my new one with Windows 7. I was thinking it could be a good thing to be able to boot the winxp drive, if I'd like to run something from that installation. Is this possible? How would you configure this?

hi quano, you could use bcdedit to acheive what you are after BCDEDIT - How to Use hope that helps

Can't get it to work, my computer will instantly reboot when selecting the Windows XP option in the boot loader. I tried setting the drive to another drive letter in bcdedit, which doesn't have win xp on it, and then the boot loader gave me an error message instead when I tried to load winxp. So I suppose it is sort of working, it just crashes or somehow fails to load winxp when using the correct drive letter. Any ideas?

The drive letter I'm supposed to give it is the one that shows up as winxp in windows 7, right? Because previously, my winxp drive was C drive, but in Windows 7 that drive seems to be E, looking at the contents.

Hello quano, welcome to Seven Forums!



Leave both drives connected and do a startup repair on the Windows 7 with the W 7 install disk, that should get you the boot option menu at bootup; have a look at the tutorial at the link below.

Startup Repair

yes the ntldr labels the xp installation as "E" drive , did you run the bcdedit as administrator and followed the guide to the letter, i myself have never used bcdedit ,so dont feel competent enough to assist you any further but please be patient another member will be along shortly and pick up on the thread

along came BFK while iwas typing my reply thanks BFK

Have a read of those tutorials:
Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Use EasyBCD 2.0 in Win 7 & Win XP.
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=642

A bit more reading.
BCDEDIT - How to Use - Page 7 - Windows 7 Forums
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...wont-boot.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...ndows-7-a.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...dual-boot.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...ndows-7-a.html

That's how a team works pebbly!

Thanks!

Startup repair did not find any issues.


The first article doesn't seem to cover my problem, as it assumes only one OS is installed. Besides, I did what it said (installing win 7 on a new drive), yet I did not get a boot screen like the one there. Instead it boots directly into Windows 7 (by default).

EasyBCD - I already tried this when using bcd. It's still a bcd-method, and it does not work.

Maybe something isn't quite right with my harddrive setting, as it doesn't even show up in bios when selecting boot device. I don't know if all drives are supposed to be shown there or not. I've got 5 drives, and the only one showing up is the win 7 drive. Yet they're all accessable in Windows 7.

All HD's need to show in your BIOS.

Which EasyBCD are you using?

When using EasyBCD are you doing Step 14/15?

Did you re-boot after the "startup repair"?



Right click computer, manage, disk management, please post a screen shot / snip.


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