Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

I carried it over from my old desktop to my first Build that has sata, so it had ide connections. Its been awhile since i even checked them out and now see that they have Blu-Ray DVD burners too. I don't know why anyone would want one of those unless they are into watching Blu-ray movies over a pc ( ugh ) or copy a Blu- Ray movie, which is not for me. So Now for a few extra bucks for that one and lesser for the minus Blu-Ray one.

OH, I intend to get a sata just was wondering if i should get one that has Blu-Ray..as of now I do not see a need for Blu-Ray. I have Blu-Ray player for my 55" TV screen ...why would anyone want to watch a movie of any function on a PC is beyond me.

I have an issue I have not seen in this thread.

I have been dual booting between XP and W7 by physically switching the drives. I thought I would be using XP less, but now I would like to dual boot from 2 partitions on one boot drive.

I have Ghost images of both drives, which I want to use to avoid all the OS and software install issues. I have tried this a number of times, including using Easy BCD, but always wind up just booting into XP. If I just restore W7, I have to repair the install with the W7 CD. I can then boot into W7, but do not see the boot loader option. After restoring the XP image, I can only boot to XP.

Some questions along with the request for help:
Which image should be restored first, W7 or XP?
Should I select the Ghost restore options for marking the partition as active and/or restoring the MBR?

Thanks in advance.

It sounds like the restore program is restoring to the same partition and that won't work. Honesty I haven't used the software so I am not sure if it will allow you to restore 2 different images to the same hard drive but when you restore if possible ensure that partitions are different. I would restore XP first and then 7. Since the image doesn't have an entry in the bootloader for XP you will have to use a program such as easy bcd to add an entry to the bootloader. Actually I am not even sure if this is possible since 7 requires a small second partition. I'll see if I can get help from someone more knowledgeable. Something to note those is that some systems will allow you to select the hard drive that you want to boot from so that you wouldn't have to switch the drives out provided that there is room for 2 drives in your system.

An alternative would be to set up XP as a virtual machine running on 7 using software such as Microsoft Virtual PC, Vmware, or Virtual Box. XP would have to be reinstalled first on the virtual machine.

Can we see a screenshot of Disk Mgmt from Win7 using Snipping Tool, and XP using Paint?

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image
Screenshot with Paint

Check if your imaging program offers advanced settings to transfer MBR, Track0 and Active flag.

I can't get a screen shot of disk mgmt at the moment because I am back on the W7 drive. However, in W7 the empty partition for XP is drive H (the next unused letter in the system). In XP, the W7 partition is also H.

As I said, I have been able to boot into both systems with the restored images. The partitions are different sizes to ensure that the images are written to the proper partition. I just have not been able to get the OS boot option when restarting after restoring the XP image.

Do you recommend restoring the W7 image last along with the restore MBR and Set Active options in Ghost? Should I use these options for the XP image restore as well?

If you can boot into Win7 then why can't we see a screenshot? The first link given shows exactly how.

The steps depend upon the configuration e.g. Logical, System Reserved, etc.

It is the W7 drive, not the dual boot drive.

I'm working on something in 7 and can't swap to the dual boot drive at the moment. I'll be glad to post it when I can, but it would just show a drive with partitions C and H.