Dual boot HP Pavilion P6310f with 7 and XP Pro

To start, I am reading through the tutorial by BRINK regarding this "How to....". I printed the related topics so I have it in front of me and also reading the replies from other members. Well after reading about 25 pages of the 191, I am starting my own thread. Am I out of line here? If so, advise me and I'll join the mentioned thread and mark this one as resolved. If it's ok to proceed with this thread, I'll respond with the issues I at hand.

Thanks.

If you want to run XP, simplify the process and virtualize it. XP runs perfectly in a virtual machine, and your system is more than capable of doing so.

What is the Help question? :huh:

Deaconfrost - thanks for the reply, but right now "virtualize.." is over my head. Excuse ===> noob.
So I will respond by answering gregrocker which I said I was going to do if my #1 post was ok to do. Here's my request for help.
I got a desktop, HP Pavilion P6310f, quad core AMD Athalon II x4 630, M2N78-LA mobo, 1tb hdd, came with integrated NVidia geForce 9100 but has EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256mb graphics card. Windows 7 64bit installed withot bloatware.
Then I loaded an old cad program (2000) which worked flawlessly on XP, but had issues running in 7. Some commands would not work and occasionally freezes. I have other XP programs I like to install, but I decided not to and conciderred to dual boot with XP. The tutorial by Blink and related tutorials looked good, so I printed them out. I also read about 25 pages of the 191 listed, which is way too long to read everything. Hence this thread.
I am following option #2 which addresses the dual boot with 7 installed first. Reading through the WARNING section, I eliminated some possibilities.
I have no RAID, but I do have SATA. This option had two ways of doing it and since I have no floppy, I have to slipstream the SATA drivers. The instructions for slipstreaming the drivers state that if the XP cd does not have the drivers, go on the manufacturer's site and download the drivers. So before dooing any partitioning, I went on HP's site and it only showed drivers for 7 or vista for this HP P6310f unit. I also searched the mobo M2N78-LA and again only lists M2N68-LA.
That's where I'm at. Is there a way other than attempting to load XP Pro SP2 (per tutorial), to find out if my cd has the proper drivers? I do not want to get stuck midway and having to recover the system. I never done it. Having said that I did make recovery discs the day I got it home. It made 3 dvd discs, hope that worked.
Can my underlined question be answered? I hope my post is not too winded.
Thank you in advance

Do you have another sata hard drive laying around ?

Is this a legitimate retail XP disc you`re using for the install ?

You'll need to find XP SATA or AHCI drivers for the SATA controller.

You could possibly install in IDE mode but if WIn7 is installed in AHCI mode it won't start afterwards and you'd be faced with having to reinstall it.

I'd consult Theog who wrote the Slipstream tutorial to seek help finding the drivers. He's a whiz at it.

addram - Yes, the XP Pro I have is a retail, never used and still in it's wrapper. No I do not have another SATA drive, but I do have a 40gb IDE.
gregrocker - How can I tell if the XP cd is SATA? I think I'll take your advise and chime in on the thread on "Slipstream XP..." by theog. If that works out better, I will come back to this and mark it as resolved. Thanks.

slowpoke said:

Deaconfrost - thanks for the reply, but right now "virtualize.." is over my head. Excuse ===> noob.

Click to expand...

Take this as the perfect opportunity to learn. It's easier than dual-booting, and puts your primary OS at less of a risk. On top of that, you don't need to reboot to switch OSes.