xp after vista

truehollander said:

I have a laptop with win7 64bit and would like to install in a second partition -that I already created for it- winXP.

When I boot from the XP installation disk, I get an error message right after it loads all the files it needs and right before starts the installation. The message says something like "windows halted the installation to prevent damage to your computer... and soe more tips that I think are irrelevant.

I read that NTFS in win7 is different from XP...

Help please... I really would like this dual boot.

Thanks,
Frank

Welcome to Seven Forums.

Can you tell us what these "irrelevant" messages were?
Just out of curiosity.

What steps did you do to prepare for the install?
Please be thorough, we need something to go on.

Where did you get the XP installation disk?
From MS?
Down loaded an ISO file?

ba5ik said:

you can't install XP after a vista or 7 install for dual boot purposes. Xp and vista/7 use different boot loaders. like gregrocker said XP can't add itself to vista/7's BCD file.. that is the error message you are getting, none of the messages you are getting are "irrelevant" they are telling you simply that what you are trying to do is not possible.

Since you have a laptop the only way you can dual boot is install XP first, then Install 7.

It is possible, but it's not easy.

See the tutorial from Greg's post.

The reason that you are in this pickle to begin with is because you didnt " want to spend all this time and effort for nothing." If installing XP is really necessary, then take the time to do it right and consider the time taken as an investment in your education...

truehollander said:

I prepared the laptop by creating a 40GB partition D, formatting it to NTFS for this I used Acronis Disk Director 10; copying there the two files needed for winXP to boot that I downloaded from another place; installing in win7 EasyBCD and creating in D a winXP "nest" (letting D know winXP was coming there soon or however one rephrases this.

Then tried to install XP with the same message I has gotten since I started, prior to doing all of these things.

Is the Dell XP disk you are borrowing a recovery disk (for specific Dell machine) or a clean copy of XP? Check the root files if you are in doubt. This is a big deal.

You probably bollixed your bootloader by adding XP with EasyBCD before you tried to install it. If you can undo that then it might be recoverable so you can proceed to install XP (providing your disk is clean XP) correctly according to the tutorial Method 2.

If not, wipe the entire HDD, format new partitions and install according to the tutorial Method One.