Have Disk Error when installing XP

am trying to get a few video games to work on my new Windows 7 OS...but with all the combination of patches and compatibility modes it still does not work. So I tried yesterday to do a dual boot system taking 50 Gig's of my 300 Gig Raptor drive (which has my current OS on it), I went into the control panel and un-allocated 51200 MB of disk space and then crated a new partition. I then proceeded to install Windows XP on the new drive (after formatting the section). However after windows finished copying over the needed files to start the install, it restarts before actually installing windows. I get a "Read Disk Error press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to restart" right after i chose not to boot from the disk.

It never gets installed... The only way I was able to get the disk to boot back up in Windows 7 again was to remove the partition (just leaving 50 Gigs un-allocated) and putting in the windows 7 disk and doing a Boot Repair. Is this a problem with the drive? I have done numerous types of drive scans and the drive is in good condition and have never had any issues with bad sectors.

I am worried of trying it again on the same drive as my main OS, is there any harm in having it on my storage disk?

Thanks for any help or direction you can provide.

XP can be problematic with Win 7, especially in some circumstances. Have you been following one of the tutorials?

Do you have the System Reserved Partition (100 mb) on the drive? It can cause an XP install to not be able to find itself after rebooting.

I do have the partition... should I get rid of it?... I have been following the tutorial that is on this web site... it talks about naming the partition. I did not do that...

Is there any pros or disadvantage by having the OS on a second physical drive?

Guess I can try partitioning part of my second drive off and installing it there... And see if I get the same kind of error with it on a seperate disk.

the tutorial that I been using has been this one: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

You do not have to get rid of it, some folks like the protection it might provide.

But I believe the tutorial you are using suggests putting a drive letter on the partition, at least until the install is done.

I personally prefer another way suggested by Iseeuu that makes the XP partition active during the install. What this will do is allow a normal install, but you will have to get back into Win 7 and run EasyBCD from there to keep the Win 7 boot partition in control.

Maybe he will come by to explain, but if he doesn't, after you get XP installed and updated and whatever else you want to do, mark the Win 7 System Reserve Partition active again and then do a startup repair on Win 7, several times.

Then you can use EasyBCD to setup the dual boot. Get EasyBCD from the link and register for their forums so you can download the beta 2.0 version.

Then run EasyBCD and add an XP entry to the boot menu. Any question, post back. I am sorry, but I do not have a link to Iseeuu's tutorial.

If you decide to install on a separate drive, I would suggest you disconnect the Win 7 drive until you are done, or set the XP drive to primary in the bios until the install is finished. Then Reconnect, and set it back to primary to use EasyBCD to set up the dual boot.

Does it mater if the formating is FAT32 or NTFS?

I have not tested, but since Win 7 and XP agree on NTFS, I would use that.

So it does it on both drives. I am worried about doing it to a full drive that has information on it...

I also labeled the 100MB partition (L: ) and it still has the:
"A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

I remove the partition and try to have windows just boot up with the new partition deleted and get the error. I had to use the Windows 7 disk to repair the boot to start in Windows 7...

If you have enough ram use the sunVM. VirtualBox

I have 8 gigs of DDR3... That should be enough right?

so what all does this VirtualBox do? I have gone on the web site but it is kind of confusing to see how i can use it for XP. does this allow me to "install" XP or does virtual box become an "emulator" even though on the about it says that it runs better then an emulator.