Multiboot HDD-W7 + HDD-XP + SSD-W7

Just as I already said twice.

They come here, in droves.

The Tab may be a way to bypass Quick Boot which can hide the Boot Menu prompt.

But normally Asus mobo's use F8, and when I asked Google about his specific mobo's Boot Menu just scanning the results showed F8 in almost every one.

It is the lamest key they could have made Boot Menu, because if you're one second late it goes to Windows Advanced Boot Options which has always been F8. Hello?

My currant disc layout is attached, and since last posting I have shrunk F: and into the unallocated space copied H: (Windows XP) using easeUS.

I have created a system image of C: (using W7 backup) and this is buried in G: which now means I have no further use for Disk1 H: D: J: U: and can remove that drive.

Before doing so I would like to prove XP is runnable and to this end I tried booting off Disk2 and this ended in W7(SSD) so I reason that with nothing bootable off this drive the default boot system took over and passed us to W7.

I tried booting off Disk0 and this appeared dual boot - when I selected W7 it loaded W7(HDD) so I reason that somehow the boot manager on that partition was pointing to W7 on Disk1 (the only place W7HDD exists) - when I selected XP if failed with the message "Windows is missing ....\hal.dll"

When selecting to boot off Disk1 its a dual boot and both OS's work fine. But as this disc is the one to be retired - I need to know what to do to make I: (the copy of XP from H:) successfully boot into XP. I set it Active but that didn't seem to do anything useful.

So before retiring Disk1 - what needs to be done to I: to recover XP ?

An OS must be cloned or reimaged to the new drive using a cloning or imaging app like Macrium Imaging - Windows 7 Help Forums. I thought this was discussed at length earlier.

You had said you wanted to add an SSD to speed up your system, so which drive is the SSD? Do you want to create a Dual Boot with Win7 and XP on the SSD, or do you want to have each one on a separate SSD or hard drive booted via the BIOS? Do you want to apply the Win7 image you say you stored on G somewhere, because you didn't say where?

So tell us what exactly you want to do, where you want Win7 and where you want XP and we will give you the exact steps as we've done for thousands of others successfully who cooperated.

An OS must be cloned or reimaged to the new drive using a cloning or imaging app like Macrium Imaging - Windows 7 Help Forums. I thought this was discussed at length earlier.

I used easeUS to copy the XP partition from H: to the unallocated space on Disk0 created by shrinking F:. Surely this is the same as using macrium but I get the impression that maybe it is not. My perceived reluctance to use Macrium is based on having skimmed the article by whs where he mentions the need (advice) to create a winpe disc and the work inv0olved in that - coupled with the Macrium site wanting to download a loader app to download the macrium app - all this seemed a lot of work just to clone a partition so I have just been trying alternatives to achieve the same goal.

The SSD is C: on Disk4. I am happy to leave that as the default OS to boot.

Ultimately I want to retire Disk1 but before I do I want to preserve XP from that drive. When so done I will remove Disk1, add a spare younger 200G HDD on which will exist 2 partitions. One will be XP that I will access via boot menu one-time selection as and when - the other can be used to save the image of W7 for backup and recovery in case of disaster on the SSD version.

Do you want to apply the Win7 image you say you stored on G somewhere, because you didn't say where?

The image created by Backup & Restore / Create a System Image was created in the top folder of G: and is a structure all of its own with many .xml and other strange files as well as a huge 20G .vhd file which I assume is the "image" although I do not know what all the others are. Eventually I assumed I could just move that structure to the 2nd partition of the new 200G drive once installed. There it will remain until disaster strikes the SSD (virus or otherwise) when I would use the windows recovery disc to reinstall the image back to the SSD.

My interim desire to boot XP off Disk0 was just to prove that its still good before I remove Disk1 the original copy. As I said ultimately it will be booted off the new Disk1 (if its still called that) see above.

You can try to make the XP copy bootable by booting into XP Repair console to run Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands « Icrontic. The Disk Check included will help assure the copy is enough.

If it won't repair then install Macrium to Win7 to clone or image XP over to the space you created for it. Pay close attention when you install it that nothing is added but I don't recall that being a problem. You can always uninstall it once you're finished.

Since in tutorial Wolfgang doesn't provide the 32 bit PE disk download if you need it I will extract the ISO from mine to upload to OneDrive and provide you a link.