Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

pragnesh89 said:

Would it be better if I just install Windows XP using VMware player and use it with Ubuntu which is already installed? This is much faster and I have had good experience with using VMWare player so far.

It depends what you want to do with that XP installation. If you want to browse the web, work with text documents, and generally do fairly low power stuff then it'll work fine running in a VM. 3D games? Not so much.

hux said:

Hi - short-time reader, first-time poster. I ran into a problem during method 2 of this great guide that I was able to fix, but it isn't mentioned in the guide so I thought I'd post it here and then hopefully someone can add it.

The problem relates to the, "Error loading operating system", message that may appear after the first restart during the XP installation. I followed the advice in the guide to fix this but nothing worked. Eventually I figured it out myself: my motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-UD3P) has the following BIOS setting:

- SATA RAID/AHCI Mode

I had this set to "AHCI". After changing it to "IDE", XP was able to install just fine. After that, I was able to fix the Win7 bootloader per the advice in the guide and all was well.

However, changing this setting in this way means that you obviously lose the benefits of AHCI in Win7 (including TRIM support if you have an SSD, for example). Also, if later on you change this setting back to "AHCI", your XP installation will fail to boot, so be aware of that. If, however, you don't have an SSD and don't really care about AHCI then this fix will work fine for you.

hux said:

Gomer: It looks like Dell doesn't provide a WinXP SATA driver for that particular computer. Typically, this means you're simply out of luck and you won't be able to install XP. However, it might be possible to find another driver that will work. I'm not sure how you'd go about finding one though.

My HD is listed as ATA, not SATA

Just FYI, your drive (Samsung HD103SJ) is a SATA drive. Listing it as "ATA" is somewhat confusing but not wrong - all SATA drives are ATA drives. "SATA" means "Serial ATA".

Did you not read the Warning in Methed two before Step one.

Hi everyone

I hope someone can help. Ive got Windows 7 on my C Drive and want to install XP on my formatted S drive. I have a copy of Windows XP, however when i try to install XP the S drive is not shown on the list. Also do i need SATA drivers installed on this HDD to be able to run XP?

I'm only 13 and im only just beginning to learn about computers so im sorry if these are dumb questions!

thanks for the reply

My S: drive is an internal drive and is formatted to NTFS (Default).
where would i find the SATA drivers? i have looked on the Packard Bell website but no drivers. could you send me the link please.

thanks

They are a component of the chipset, so load the chipset in to see if it separates out SATA to choose from, or just load or slipstream the entire chipset.

Hi

I cant find any chipset drivers, do you know where to get them?

thanks

oh, that is the model i have, so is there any other way of dual booting with XP?

thanks