Solved Dual booting Windows 7 and XP

[ShdwKnght]

Hello. I have looked through the forums, but have not seen this exact problem listed. I hope someone can help me.

I bought a new computer kit last month, and after I got it all together, I installed Windows 7 Pro 64. It has the AMD A8-3850 Quad core CPU, 8gb of RAM, on an MSI A75MA-G55 motherboard, and a 1tb SATA HDD. One of the first things I had to do after installing the OS was to flash the BIOS on the MB. I have everything the way I want it on the computer now, and made a backup image of the C drive.

For the most part, everything is good with Win7. The only thing I don't like is with the sound card. I like to sing Karaoke on a website, but I couldn't get the "What you hear" function on the onboard sound card. So I bought a SB X-Fi XtremeGamer. I have the WYH function now, but my voice coming through the headphones has a lag that throws me off. So I have decided that I want to do a dual boot with Windows XP.

I have read many tutorials that tell how to do a dual boot setup, so I set out to do that. When going into the WinXP setup, I was having a problem with the hard drive. So I decided to reformat the hard drive and install the winXP first, then just install the Win7 backup afterwards.

WinXP saw the hard drive and had me do the partition and format then winxp installed fine, no problems. Ok, one problem. It installed on the C: drive. It didn't give me another option. And I know when I go to put the backup of WIN7 back on, it will want to be on the C: drive also. I have it setup the way I want it, and really don't want to have to setup both OS's again. So I again formatted the HD, installed Win7 again, then installed the backup image. I am back to where I was at the beginning. I partitioned the HDD into 4 separate drives; C:, D:, E:, and F:.


When I go in to install WINXP, the installer sees the hard drive, but it shows the partitions as:

D: Partition 1 [NTFS] 1 MB (278718 MB free)
-: Partition 2 [NTFS] 100 MB (66 MB free)
C: Partition 3 [NTFS] 123327 MB (97131 MB free)
E: Partition 4 [NTFS] 830441 MB (276178 MB free)

The only partition it will let me install it on is C: Partition 3. And that would wipe out WIN7.

So, my question is: How do I get the XP installer to see the partitions, or would it be better to just install another HDD, maybe a 120gb SATA drive, and just install WinXP on that? Would I still be able to do the dual boot that way?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello ShdwKnght, welcome to Seven Forums!


You really screwed yourself by forcing a 5th partition and accepting a Dynamic disk; XP will probably stop booting before long and I doubt you'll be able to get Windows 7 installed at all as-is; do you have good back-ups of everything on the entire HDD?

 

[ShdwKnght]

Hello ShdwKnght, welcome to Seven Forums!


You really screwed yourself by forcing a 5th partition and accepting a Dynamic disk; Windows 7 will probably stop booting before long and I doubt you'll be able to get XP installed at all as-is; do you have good back-ups of everything on the entire HDD?

Yes, I have it all the files and drivers backed up on the external drive.

So I am guessing I need to wipe the drive and start again.How do I change the drive from Dynamic to basic?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Before you do that, can you delete one of the partitions so it becomes "unallocated" space?

Then DL the pw422 Zip file from this site and burn the ISO to CD and boot the created CD and at the HDD tab convert the HDD to a Basic disk are you able to do that?


https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=b0a22789320e3247&sc=documents&id=B0A22789320E3247!215

 

[ShdwKnght]

When the boot disc loads, and tries reading the HDD, it comes up with a message, "This boot cd cannot read Win server".

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

That's because of the Dynamic, did you see how to get back to Basic I posted above, or don't you care and want to wipe the HDD and start all over, because the only other way back is to run at-least the clean command from boot to create the whole HDD as unallocated space and start over.

The Partition Wizard boot disk is free and relatively painless an will not destroy your data.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk

​

 

[ShdwKnght]

I'm sorry. The exact words are, "This bootable CD does not support Windows Server."

That was from the Partition Magic cd that you had me download and burn.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

You have to boot the PW CD, are you trying to run it from within XP.

 

[ShdwKnght]

No, that was from the boot.

 

[ShdwKnght]

I went into disk management and deleted one of the partitions so that it is unallocated. Then I rebooted the computer and let it boot from the cd of partition magic.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I haven't created/booted that CD for a while, let me look around to see if I have one already created somewhere; I don't get the reason for the "Server" message, I'm not aware if the person hosting that DL has changed it in any way, it was working correctly for a long time.

 

[ShdwKnght]

My OS is Windows 7 Pro 64 right now. I don't have the XP on here yet.

 

[ShdwKnght]

Well, I am happy to say I now have a dual boot system with Windows 7 and XP. I want to thank Bare Foot Kid for putting me on the correct path for getting this done.

My main problem was, because my disk was set as Dynamic, when I was trying to install Windows XP the installer was seeing some funky sizes and would only let me choose the C: drive where my Windows 7 installation was already residing. Bare Foot Kid told me I needed to change the HDD from a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk and suggested a program, Partition Wizard Boot Disk, to solve that problem. I did as he said, downloaded the program, burned it to a disk and then rebooted the computer with the PW boot disk in the drive.

The program started up, went through the screen to choose the resolution, but as it was starting, I got a notice that said "This bootable CD does not support Windows Server". Hmmmm. I tried it a couple more times, but got the same message. So I went to the Partition Wizard web site, and found the free Partion Wizard bootable disk from their site. So I downloaded the .iso, burned it to a disk, rebooted the computer and the program started up. And lo and behold, there was the program running. So I selected my HDD then clicked on Convert Dynamic Disk to basic disk...a window popped up that said something like "This function does not work in the home version of Partition Wizard". Oookaaaay. :banghead:

So I rebooted the computer, downloaded the pro version of PW, installed it and opened it up. I clicked on my hard drive, clicked Convert Dynamic Disk to basic disk, then clicked the apply button. It ran for a few seconds, then said it needed to reboot. I clicked ok, and when it rebooted, my drive was a basic disk.

After that, I installed WinXP with no problems. I loaded my drivers, ran EasyBCD according to the tutorial on here, then rebooted the computer. As it started up, a beutiful sight greeted me. It was the dual boot screen. I could choose between Windows 7 or Windows XP. I chose Win7, then rebooted and tried WinXP. They both booted beautifully.

I would like to thank everyone on this site that created the tutorials for the Dual boot, and mostly Bare Foot Kid for his invaluable help.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello again, good to see you got it sorted and thank you for the kind words.