Please help me to dual boot Windows 7 and XP

Combine said:

Mmm I'm trying to understand rigth away wath u said but I not sure if I get it, maybe because of my traslate or because of my incomprehension... so there is a posibility than this partition, the FACTORY_IMAGE, could not be usable after dual boot. That's what I understood.
But let's supose it does not matter now, and I have these 3 primary partitions and I want to install another OS in a new partiton. So I need to create a new one, but there's only the posibility to deal with a extended partiton, which inside let me create logical partitions, because of the limit of partitioning(3 primary partitions an 1 extended).

Everything here is correct.


To this question, yes.

So my question is if it is posible to install an OS in a logical partition.

The only exception is Windows will not boot on its own from a "Logical" partition.




Edit: This tutorial at the link below has been updated to include how to do this, have a look.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Combine said:

And my last question is if installing the OS in the logical partition is the same procedure as in a primary one.

No, a Windows OS will not boot from a logical partition unless the boot files are on another, primary partition.

So what this means is XP will not be able to finish the install as it won't be able to re-boot during the process of installation to finish the process; there is another way to do this by removing one of the other primary partitions that are already on the HDD but it will take a lot of work to accomplish successfully.





Edit: This tutorial at the link below has been updated to include how to do this, have a look.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

I just did this with another Hard Disk Drive I had around here; though I'm going to say that I can't be responsible if something goes wrong and you lose data, PLEASE make backups of anything that you don't want to lose before you start this.


Use the tutorial at the link below to shrink and create a new partition ...

make the new partition at least 60GB.

Partition or Volume - Shrink

Partition or Volume - Create New



Edit: This tutorial at the link below has been updated to include how to do this, have a look.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD


click any image to enlarge

You can have four primary partitions on a HD.

Use Partition Wizard to create Primary NTFS if Disk Management wants to make your fourth partition logical.

But I'd use Disk Mgmt to do the shrink since it's failsafe.

First save a Win7 Backup Image externally so you can reimage to where you are now in 15 minutes if necessary: Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

In addition make your Recovery Disks so you can return to Factory condition if need be.

See post #16 above.