New
#1
Preserving Dual Boot (Win7 and XP) with new motherboard?
First I'd like to say thanks to the folks who have helped me so far with this process. The machine is running 64-bit Win7 and 32-bit XP. Finally about a week ago I bought a new mobo, processor and Ram.
When I booted the computer for the first time, I let the machine boot to Win7, and I was fully expecting the OS to crash or error out in some serious fashion. But it didn't. It didn't even prompt me for the Win7 installation disk. It spent about 10 or 15 minutes installing new drivers, though. After the OS finished, I installed the drivers for the motherboard. And everything is behaving swimingly. The system is noticeably faster than the one it replaced, which is always fun.
Once I was satisfied the system was running Win7 normally, I tried booting to XP. Problems. As soon as its splash screen came up, I realized the mouse wasn't being recognized, then I saw that neither was the keyboard. At this point, I should mention that with the old system I had a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse combo. I ended up retiring this set for another Logitech wireless set because the new motherboard doesn't support PS-2 connectors for the mouse and kb, the way the original mb did. So I went with USB, in this case, a set in which both the kb and mouse share the same USB connector. Seems to me there shouldn't be a problem, but for whatever reason there was. Tomorrow, I'm thinking about dragging out an old PS-2 mouse and KB, attach them to the system using PS-2 to USB adapters and see if I can get it to respond when booting to XP. But I'm not holding out much hope.
If I have to reinstall XP, this is gonna kill the boot manager that Win7 set up, isn't it? To bring the Win7 boot manager back, does this mean I'll have to reinstall Win7 too?
*sigh* Why can't things just be simple for a change.
In case you're wondering, I've gone with an AMD Phenom X4 840 CPU and an ASRock 890GX motherboard. It's running 8 gigs of DDR3 PC1600 RAM. It has an onboard Radion 4200-series graphics processor, but the resolutions available with the processor are lame so I'm not able to run at my flat screen's preferred resolution. I mean, in this day and age of the ubiquitous 1920x1080 flat screen, who in their right mind would ignore this resolution? AMD/ATi apparently. I have a nice graphics card in another machine that does support this rez, and I guess it's gonna get pressed into service in the new machine. Or maybe I'll buy a new one; haven't made up my mind yet.
The old mb is still under warranty and still has a lot of life left to it -- an ASUS M4A78 Pro. It has AM2/AM3 socket capability and is running an AMD Athlon X2 7850 CPU, but it has problems. I'm sending it into ASUS for warranty repair/replacement, and then it will be put back into service in another machine that's currently running an eight yo mb/processor, due for retirement. I plan to run multi OSes on it too. Most likely XP and Ubuntu Linux (currently only Ubuntu is installed). I also want a small DOS partition -- less than a gig will be plenty -- so I can run some cool old DOS programs I still have. I have a legit copy of Quarterdeck's DeskView X -- like about a dozen 3.5" floppies, some of which I think have probably gone bad by now -- but I'd really like to get DVX up and running, just to play around with it some.
Okay, well, that's about it. If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd be happy getting your feedback.