Windows 7: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

dont have that any more, its a home made recovery partition from the disk when i upgraded from vista, ok what ill do, ill wait til i get some blank disks, and make an ISO from my recovery partition just in case

Forgive me if this has already been covered. I get to the point where you install XP in method 2 but the Installation of XP isn't working properly. I'm able to install XP to the point where it needs to restart. but then when it does instead of continuing the installation I get this error, "Press any key to boot from CD..... Error loading operating system" and I'm not able to do anything. The Only way I've been able to restore functionality to my PC is to dual boot my PC with another copy of Windows 7 then delete the second copy of Windows 7 with Easybcd and remove the installation files. Any advice to get this working would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there. I bought a new PC with Windows 7 installed about two months ago. Last night I made a new partition (100GB) on my drive for the XP install. After finishing the install I rebooted and got, "Disc read error. Press CTRL+ATL+DEL to restart". Please help me!

@Crusnik -- I had a similar problem, and my solution was to use two physically separate hard drives, which allowed me to force the boot (and hence, reboot in the XP install) to the 2nd hard drive until everything in XP was set up like I wanted. Then, I was able to go back and use EasyBCD on my Windows 7 install to get the NT boot loader (needed for XP) running on the 1st drive to redirect to the 2nd one for dual boot. Works awesomely now. If you'd like to read the drama, I believe that it starts on page 47 and continues on to 48 & 49, with a couple of other people's discussions sprinkled inbetween.


@Trevor: if your disc that is giving you this error is your Windows 7 HDD, don't fear...it's likely totally fixable. Boot from your Windows 7 DVD, and do a repair from the disc (startup repair should be the first option in the repair menu screen). I had the same thing happen to me when going through this, and Windows 7 was able to fix itself pretty much every time. The only time I got this error and it was unfixable was when I was trying to boot XP from my 2nd drive with a full 1Tb partition...that made it completely crap out. So, I made a 50Gb partition for XP on the 2nd drive, and then it fired right up, no problem. I used one big partition for the rest of the drive as storage/installation space for both OSs from both physically separate hard drives. In any case, keep in mind that partition size, depending upon your mobo's capabilities, can play a role in whether you can boot from that particular disc.

Grez, just using one 1TB HDD for both installs. I was having a look around the thread so from what I can tell I'm going to:

Use the Win 7 DVD to repair (apparently this must be done three times!)
Use BCD 2.0 to give the XP partition a drive letter.
Use the "How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista when Dual Booting with XP" thread to stop XP deleting the restore points.

Cheers man, must give it a go tonight now!

Grez thanks for the reply but I don't have a second hard drive. Nor would I find it worth it to buy one just for XP. Does anyone know an alternative method I could use?

If you want to put both OSs on the same drive, I strongly suggest installing XP first...it's much easier. Just be sure that you have your partition sizes set the way that you want before the install. It's a lot easier than installing, then doing a shrink, then adding the second partition and installing the second OS.

The reason that it's easier to do XP first is that XP doesn't use the Vista/Windows 7 bootloader. It uses ntldr, and when you dual boot with Vista/Windows 7, the bootloader there basically just calls ntldr for XP. So, if you install XP first, it works like a normal install...then you can install Windows 7 all in one shot on the 2nd partition, get the bootloader set up (via easyBCD), configure it per instructions in this thread to recognize your XP install, and you should be good to go.

Grez, again thank you for your responses. I'm aware that its much easier to install XP first but then it makes it a pain to remove it latter. So that is why I'm trying to find a solution to install 7 first then XP. That way when Windows 7 is fully supported I can remove XP with out a clean install of Windows 7.

I followed your guide and everything went perfectly! I expected to have problems but your guide took me through the process step by step.

Thanks Brink!

@CrusnikVIII:

CrusnikVIII, I don't know if this helps but here's what I did (I had Win 7 installed):

1. Booted from XP install disc.
2. Installed and rebooted.
3. Got the "Disc read error. Press CTRL+ATL+DEL to restart" message.
4. Used my WIN 7 install disc to repair my Win 7 installation.
5. Booted into Win 7 and continued from step 8 of method two from there.

Works perfectly now! (Only thing I forgot was the "How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista when Dual Booting with XP" part. Must do that over the weekend.)

Thanks to everyone on here for the help and to Brink for the guide!