Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Great instructions ... very easy to follow. This is the first time I've attempted to dual boot. I followed all the steps in method 2 but have run into a little snag. After installing and configuring EasyBCD I rebooted and it goes directly to Windows 7 with no option displayed to go to Windows XP. Here is my setup ... Windows 7 is C: (hard drive 1), Data is D: (hard drive 2 partition 1), Windows XP is F: (hard drive 2 partition 2).

I installed the EasyBCD in Windows 7. It did have an entry for XP in there but it didn't have any path info. I removed it and did the steps to add it again. This time it added the path info. A reboot produced a prompt for 7 or xp. YAY! The only quirk is that sometimes when I reboot the xp side, at least that is where I've noticed it, the BIOS will come up at the very beginning and say that POST or boot was interrupted ... F1 to continue or Del for the BIOS and load defaults. Not really a problem but just a little annoying.

thank you very much for this....

helped a lot...was worried to go into Windows 7 again after installing XP...

tutorial works great....thx...

I get the same thing as Snakedoctor has outlined above and I added a post to which no one bothered to reply as well. Can anyone respond to his post??

Probably because nobody who saw the post has come across that issue.

I haven't either - I don't use XP . It's not that they didn't bother. No point in guessing.

Googling might throw up the answer.

Stupidity or something i have missed ?


Situation

• : 2 hard disks- 500 gig and a 250 gig ,both sata ,bios boot order is 1, dvd drive,2, 500 gig sata with XP pro .

• disk 0 has 4 partitions with two having names attached along side the letters, C:windows XP boot files(97 gig (partition active)) D: (97 gig) E:windows xp(97 gig) F: 172 gig)

• c:has my XP pro boot files in the root, e: has my windows XP pro installation .

• disk 1 has 5 partitions,two having names attached along side the letters H:I:J:L:K: H:windows 7 installation(31 gig(partition active)) ,L:W7 backup (is a logical drive ).

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XP pro was already (slip stream) installed before i installed windows 7 ultimate, also W7 installed a boot folder onto disk 0 ,in the root of the drive !Using this standard method of install ,(with both disks still attached )gave me a working dual boot,with both OS's working as normal ,and with everything in the bios left as is (dvd drive as 1 boot and disk 0 (which holds my XP pro) as boot 2).

But when i went to back up my H:windows 7 drive ,onto the L:W7 drive ,using w7's back up ,i was unable to do this ,as along with the 10 gig H:windows 7 drive ,it also wanted to backup the whole partition which had the boot folder on,on disk 0 , the :windows XP boot files partition , all 97 gigs of it .

So the only way i could back up W7 was by removing the boot folder from disk0 ,disconnecting disk 0 (windows XP pro ),changing bios boot to see disk 1 as 2nd boot and repairing W7 using the W7 install disc.

But doing that then gave me access to W7 to back up the one drive/partition ,but XP pro wouldn't start ,missing ntldr,( now obvious as W7 repair couldn't see the disk with XP pro on it if it' was disconnected ).XP pro would start with the bios set back to disk 0 as 2nd boot ,but no W7 dual boot was there ,as expected .

Tried the easybcd ,but just loaded XP pro ,if i switched disks in the bios to disk 1,i get the OS choice screen ,but XP pro starts with missing hal.dll ,ntldr .

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So at this stage ,i am now back to the beginning, having formatted the W7 partition.I just have XP pro running on disk 0 and a back up of W7 on the second disk .All i want is a way to install ,dualboot and backup windows 7 ultimate onto the second hard disk,leaving XP pro on the first hard disk .

The problem i see that caused this mess to follow,is that when the boot folder was silently installed and hidden onto my XP pro hard disk,this prevented my back up,and i was not going to back up nearly 100 gigs ,when the total W7 files needed came to just over 10 gig in total,.

edit: should i have removed the dvd drive as a boot option and just left both hard disks as the first and second boot devices?

edit: with easybcd and when i checked my XP pr boot.ini, there was only an instance of XP pro!

Hi,

It's a common issue.

Restore the 7 image to the 250 gb HD.

Set the 250gb drive first in boot order and run startup repair 3 times ( unless you already did that before creating the image).

You should now boot into 7 - but not XP.

Add the ability to boot into XP with EasyBCD 2.0 Beta

Install Easy on 7.

Click Add/Remove entries - select Windows 2K/NT/XP/2K3 in the drop down ( drive letter is auto determined).

Click Add entry - let Easy autoconfigure.

You will then boot thru the 7 partition - you will have a boot menu choice of 7 or XP , and you will be able to image just the 7 partition.

NOTE: If you reinstall 7 onto the 250 gb drive ( instead of restoring the image) - you will end up with an additional 100mb system reserved partition - UNLESS you have created an active partition on the HD first - then just install 7 onto it

Well i found the problem,i was using the wrong version of easyBCD, instead of version 2.0 .

So now i have xp pro on one sata hard disk ,then with the XP pro hard disk unplugged ,(changed bios to have dvd drive as 1st boot device and windows 7's HD as the 2nd boot device). i installed windows 7 ultimate from my backup onto the second hard disk,copied ntldr and ntdetect.com from XP pro's root of the active partion,to the root of windows 7's active partition.

Then use the latest easyBCD ,in my case i didn't need to touch the "Manage Bootloader" option and i just left my motherboard bios boot settings as they are.Easy when you read the instructions.

Hi,

Glad you got it working.