How do I install Win XP on a second HDD using Win 7

[Porkchops007]

A few years ago, my local computer guy built me a crap computer with Windows XP on it and it could barely run XP. It had only a 1/2 GB RAM and was single core @3GHz. The motherboard was so old it still supported ribbon cable floppy drives and he included a broken floppy too. I'm taking what's good of the computer (E.g. the hard drive) and am going to put it in my new gaming computer I built in October of 2013. It's a 250GB 7200rpm SATA. I've already installed it and I can run programs off of it and everything, but, I want to be able to boot off of it. I know this isn't possible right now because it was from a different computer. I've been reading a bit on how to do this and I'm seeing that I need to install XP first, then repair install 7 after to use both? And I need to somehow dual boot so I can choose which one I want to boot off of? I'm kind of confused and would like to know how to do this specificallly to my situation. So, in all, I want to install Windows XP on my second hard drive while still keeping Windows 7 on my first hard drive. I want to keep the files on both computers if possible. If I can't, it's not the end of the world. There's not much on that second hard drive. If someone could please help me, that'd be great. -Porkchops007

 

[AddRAM]

You should be able to copy and paste the files you want off the XP drive onto your W7 drive before you start.

Once you format and install XP those files will be gone.

It would be better to unplug the W7 drive, install XP on the other drive, then plug in the W7 drive.

Then use the bios to choose which OS you want to boot into.

I would leave 7 as the default OS, then boot into XP whenever you want to use it.