Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

If you mean can you install a 32 bit o/s on a 64 bit capable pc - then yes.

So how would you do a second install of W7 if your first install it 32bit, and now you want to dual boot to 64bit? Do you follow method two, but do the 64bit install?

Hey Brink, nice work!

I have an added dimension.

I have 2 drives, one with xp and the other with ubuntu..
...a 3rd drive which is 1Tb which stores files for work, music etc.

Ive got a Windows 7 Ultimate retail disk gratis of microsoft and want to add a new 4th drive to install it on.

At the moment when i boot up, i get grub and can choose between xp and ubuntu...i want to be able to choose from these two AND windows 7.

How do i go about this? ... i.e. i dont want to harm any of the 3 older drives, theyve got tons of valuable stuff on them.

As a starter for ten, I unplugged the ubuntu drive and the storage drive leaving just xp drive wired up and switched on the pc. It booted into xp as if it was the only OS.

So I thought if i install and activate the new drive (4th drive) in xp and assign it a letter like W, then reboot into the W7 disk using your method, then this will give me a functioning dual boot...am i right???? ...then i just reconnect the storage drive and enable it in W7.

If im right then that just leaves me to reinstall and configure grub from a live CD so that grub has all 3 OSs.

Can you verify my line of thinking or advise otherwise. Thanks.

As far as i know, you can just pull in the new drive and install 7 on it.
You will get the GRUB loader overwritten with the Windows Vista/7 bootloader.
Only problem is that XP will appear as "Older version of Windows".
So, if you want to have 7, and keep the GRUB bootloader., follow this ^^
Reinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it Out :: the How-To Geek

turns out i got a black screen after the xp loader yesterday.

luckily i hadnt installed w7 yet. so i unplugged the xp drive and ubuntu drive and installed w7 on new drive #4.

Luckily i can see the xp drive from my computer in w7 so have copied all my files over. the third drive with all the stored files was visible too so no problems there.

Ill follow your guide to reinstall grub, thanks.

It means ive lost the xp boot but at least i can see all its files in w7 and can copy them over.

Can someone please help me out? I had xp and 7 working properly with the option of which OS to start with, but then i deleted xp and decided to reinstall it again after a while. After I did, I found out that you cant install an older version with 7 because it will not give you the option of which OS to start with and it will go with xp automatically. So then i deleted 7 and reinstalled it, but still I'm not getting the option and it's going straight to the newly installed 7.

Easiest to install the free Easybcd on 7.

Add an entry for XP - the XP entry must point at the partition containing the XP boot files - not necessarily the same as the partition XP is installed on.

Go to folder options - show Hidden Files - look for ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini - they should be on the Active partition - that is where you point the XP entry with Easybcd.

Hope it helps

I'm really needing a step-by-step. Im on 7 right now which is C: and xp is on E:. In easyBCD i go into add/remove entries. In type put Windows NT/2k/xp/2k3 once i do that the drive cannot be changed anymore so i press add entry and it gives me an error NTDLR not found. What did i do wrong?

You need to select the drive before you select Windows NT/2k/xp/2k3.

it needs to be the drive those 3 files are located on - they should be on the Active partition.


Look in Disk Management to see which partition is marked System, Active.