Some questions with dual boot

Hello wincentmoy Happy New Year 2010 at the Se7en Forums!

One question to start with here would be the edition of RTM you have on presently? And is that the 32bit or 64bit to ? The RTM is the same as the retail without the dvd there. It's still the 7600 build.

Once you replace the present 7 installation the new install should pick up on the XP installation and list that as the "previous version of Windows" when starting up. The 7 installer will detect XP and add it in automatically as the boot option there.

If for some reason it doesn't one free program called EasyBCD can add XP into the 7 boot loader by edit of the BCD store. Presently however the new 2.0 release for that is still pending which will preserve the new 7 boot splash screen. The 1.7.2 version available now was written mainly for Vista and could easily replace the 7 look with the old Vista scroll bar screen. Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies released 4/8/2008 there.

System specs especially the number and type of hard drives installed would be the largest help. If you have any ide drives the Windows installer will go to that drive first to place boot files there.

For sata the first drive plugged into port #1 will be automatically seen as the boot device even if another drive is set as default which you should know already from the present dual boot. If the RTM install is on the first of two or more sata HDs you shouldn't have any worries since the new 7 install will go there when the drive is selected. With 5 satas in here 2 for storage the first just added the 7 install still went well.

What Saltgrass means there is which drive sees the boot files and is plugged into the first sata port the 160gb 7 is on or the 80gb XP is on?

The Windows installer will automatically place the new installation's boot files on the drive seen as HD0 or Drive 1 since it always for the first drive on a system. You can have 6 drives and the boot files will still go to the first along with the new entries in the master boot record(mbr) even if 7 is installed on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.

That won't stop the new 7 install from replacing the first however. Since XP has been on all along I would have to guess the 80gb XP is the first there. The fresh install will simply add XP in automatically since it will pick up on the present BCD store as well as detect the XP installation and add that in as "previous version of Windows" as seen as the second boot option.

If you are not able to see onto the XP drive when booted in the new 7 install simply take a trip into the Disk Management tool and right click on the drive shows for XP and assign it a drive letter in order to see initialized as a logical drive. Often XP will be hidden from 7 by default if you haven't already seen that the first time around.

With the 80gb set as the default boot device the new 7 install to the 160gb will still work as an upgrade depending on which edition the RTM is there. The RTM and new 7 disk both are 7600s only one being on disk. The upgrade would have to be over the Home Premium or Pro RTM.

Note the inplace upgrade paths available for 7 in the guide here. Upgrade Install with Windows 7