tried adding XP as a dual boot--disabled my PC

[Madwand]

Running Win7 on a Gigabyte SLI dual video card mobo (only one installed, can't remember the name of the board), 6G ram, I7, 64bit.

Tried to add XP as a dual boot option on a partitioned 100G H: drive. Upon initial installation of XP, everything goes fine, it installs all the files it needs, then says it's gonna reboot in 15 secs. After that it goes wrong. PC boots back up to the black screen saying "booting from CD, hit any key to boot from CD." It should be going stright to the 30 minute install screens of XP, but all it does it stick to this endless loop. If you hit any button to boot to CD, all it does is start the same process over, asking you what partition you want, etc.

Besides that, now it will not boot to Win7, so my PC is trashed at this point. The only way I know to fix it is to format the whole HDD and start over. I wonder if this is something to do with my mobo...

I'm hoping someone knows what magic button to push to make this work, which I really doubt, but if I have to start from scratch, will I have better luck installing XP first, then adding Win7 as the 2nd option?

The only way for me to check answers on this now is to drive to a wifi spot in town and use my laptop, so hopefully I have given you all the info you need to answer this.

 

[Zidane24]

I would complety wipe the computer->Install XP first-> Then install 7...7's bootloader will take over and add XP automatically...

 

[Madwand]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind iof I don't get an answer to my question. I have lots of data on this PC that i am not ready to delete. I need to recover it if it is possible.

Actually, I am not even sure formatting the C: Win7 drive will help because I would be doing exactly what I said I did if I followed your advice. I have two partitions on that HDD, one for each OS. So if I formatted them both and tried to install XP, wouldn't I be in the same boat I am right now? I need to know why I can't get past the black boot screens.

 

[Zidane24]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind iof I don't get an answer to my question. I have lots of data on this PC that i am not ready to delete. I need to recover it if it is possible.

Actually, I am not even sure formatting the C: Win7 drive will help because I would be doing exactly what I said I did if I followed your advice. I have two partitions on that HDD, one for each OS. So if I formatted them both and tried to install XP, wouldn't I be in the same boat I am right now? I need to know why I can't get past the black boot screens.

Is AHCI enabled in your BIOS?

 

[Madwand]

I have no idea, that is not an option in my bios.

 

[Zidane24]

It is just a setting in your BIOS...normally it falls under AHCI compatibility [enable][disable]

 

[Madwand]

I went ahead and formatted my whole HDD as I found that XP will not install if there are ANY partitions on the HDD when you try to install. So XP is currently installing normally as it always has in the past.

My question now is how do I get it to dual boot 7 and make 7 my primary system. I have seen tutorials on here about doing the dual boot and you say some bootloader will fix everything. But I want XP to be minimal and will only use it for when 7 won't do the job, which it normally does. Am I going to have to live with XP being C and 7 being G? Is that going to interfere with anything such as installing programs when they want to go to C by default? Any other problems? From experience, I don't see this going smoothly past XP installing.


http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831
The problem is that if you installed Windows in IDE mode (ie you didn't use F6 and supply a driver disk), then simply changing the BIOS setting to AHCI mode and rebooting will cause Windows to fail and will require a repair install. Most people have been advising to reinstall Windows if you want AHCI enabled.

 

[Madwand]

I knew it wouldn't go smoothly...I installed XP, then I partitioned my 600G HDD to 100G for C and a new partition of 500G for D. Now I reboot just like before and tell my bios to boot from CD and it says booting crom CD 2X then boots to XP normally. It wasn't doing that before. No matter what I do, it won't boot the 7 disc that I used to install many times before. This mess never ends...

 

[SquonkSC]

I knew it wouldn't go smoothly...I installed XP, then I partitioned my 600G HDD to 100G for C and a new partition of 500G for D. Now I reboot just like before and tell my bios to boot from CD and it says booting crom CD 2X then boots to XP normally. It wasn't doing that before. No matter what I do, it won't boot the 7 disc that I used to install many times before. This mess never ends...

I don't understand why you wiped the whole disk, I thought you said you had data on it?

But now that you did. The question is, why not only Windows 7? Is there anything that you need that won't run on windows 7?

Besides, you could always install Virtual PC and run a XP in there for that rare program that won't work under Win7

Think about it.

If you still decide you must install dual boot with XP, let me know, I'll help you setting it up the right way.

greetz,

 

[Madwand]

I formatted because the only person who answered me said that was the way to do it. See above.

I would love to have only Win7 as it is a great OS. But you should know there are many programs that will not run on it. In particular, I play video games and many of them either will not support online gameplay or were made to play ONLY on XP or earlier OSs, ie. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Just cause a game is a few years old does not mean that I should not be able to play it. I just purchased that game and can't play it. There's nothing to think about.

I have installed Win7 many times before with no problem, but on a HDD with only one partition and one OS. Now I have a 2nd partition ready for it and XP installed and I can't boot the CD. I had decided I needed to dual boot before I posted this. None of the methods I followed helped, so if you have info I can use, I would appreciate knowing it.

 

[zigzag3143]

I formatted because the only person who answered me said that was the way to do it. See above.

I would love to have only Win7 as it is a great OS. But you should know there are many programs that will not run on it. In particular, I play video games and many of them either will not support online gameplay or were made to play ONLY on XP or earlier OSs, ie. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Just cause a game is a few years old does not mean that I should not be able to play it. I just purchased that game and can't play it. There's nothing to think about.

I have installed Win7 many times before with no problem, but on a HDD with only one partition and one OS. Now I have a 2nd partition ready for it and XP installed and I can't boot the CD. I had decided I needed to dual boot before I posted this. None of the methods I followed helped, so if you have info I can use, I would appreciate knowing it.

Madwand

Have you tried running the legacy games in xp compatibility mode?

Ken

 

[Madwand]

I tried every trick in the book to get Far Cry 2 to play online, including that, but Punkbuster doesn't support 7 till it is commercial, so that doesn't work.

I tried Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and it said it would not play on an OS later than XP. I didn't try comp mode. It is too late now. I have XP installed and cannot install 7 as dual boot so I can't try it.

I got 7 to load from the disk and read some files, then it goes to the blue screen with the bird, leaves, and white lines. Then it just sits there. I guess it's my fault that's all it does...It'd really be awesome if you could just dual boot XP and 7. It's a shame you can't do that...

Edit: I forgot you have to look at that screen for about an hour before anything happens. I left it running and went to bed and when I got up, it was ready. So I got it installed. Was reading the tut on easybcd and it said you needed it to fix 7's bootloader, but I don't see why you need it. Mine shows XP and 7 both on the screen with a 30 sec wait. I would like to reduce that to 5 sec, but otherwise it's doing what it's sposed to.