Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

I have 7 64bit Ultimate and XP 32 bit installed on different drives and they both show C as the main drive. This only happens if you install XP first.
Good post though.

First, apologies if this question has been asked and answered. There are over 220 notes in this thread , and I haven't read through them all. If already answered, a pointer to the answer would be fine.

I'm attempting Option 2, Win7 first then WinXP. When I get to Step 10 "BCD Deployment" and click "Write MBR", EasyBCD presents an imposing warning message (see attachment). This warning isn't described in the tutorial so perhaps it's new to EasyBCD (I have EasyBCD V2.3).

I have lots of computer experience (application development), but don't mess with boot stuff very often, so I'm not sure what this message is telling me.

First, it's asking if I'm sure I want to uninstall something ("BOOTMGR"), but I don't know what it means to uninstall that thing. Is it safe? Can I get it back if I unininstall it and then change my mind? The way the message is worded, it seems to be asking if I'm sure I want to uninstall something that's required to boot Windows 7.

The message goes on to imply there's some other step I must do first ("...only boot into Windows XP if the proper boot files are already in place") but I don't know what files it's referring to or how to ensure they're "in place". And what "place" should they be in?

In short, what happens if I click "Yes" in this warning dialog? I'm concerned of course that I'll render my system inoperative.

FWIW I'm also attaching a screen shot of Disk Management in case it's relevant. Installation locations for Win7 & WinXP can be inferred from the drive labels. (And you can't see it but my System Reserved partition is assigned drive letter "B:").

Hi, I am a late comer to this thread. I haven't had the difficulties that others seemed to have. I am not familiar with the methods that were outlined. My method in my last post was because I had XP OEM preinstalled, and I was backing up and restoring a partition of it. I cannot praise Paragon Drive Copy enough for helping with this. It even deals with the Advanced Format of later hard drives. This difference might create issues. If you install XP on a newer hard drive using Advanced Format without using a backup as I said I did, then you would have to obtain the fix tool by going to the web site for you hard drive brand.

As to dual booting XP and W7 generally: Microsoft on a page I happened across a while ago said to install the older OS first, then the newer one. I have only been dealing with 32 bit if that makes a difference, I would doubt it but I don't know. I am assuming if you tried a dual boot with one 32 bit and one 64 bit, you shouldn't go from one to the other by restarting the computer, you would have to shutdown first each time. This is relates to experience I had with the dual booting problem where the sound goes away in XP, solved by shutting down Windows 7 first, not restarting.

I have been setting up computers with older hard drives for XP and W7 dual booting and have had no problems. First I removed all partitions from the hard drive, leaving it all as unallocated, using the Paragon boot disk. I install XP first using a Microsoft disc, then install W7 using a disc. There is no system partition added by W7 for some reason this way, but it works fine.

I have also set up a triple boot with Ubuntu, on a hard drive that uses Advanced Format. In my last effort at this particular situation, I installed XP first, using the recovery discs with my laptop, then recovered an archive backup with Paragon Drive Copy eliminating issues with Advanced Format. Then I installed Windows 7, then I installed Ubuntu, which is a bit different to what I described before because XP is first to be added to the hard drive this time. The problem with installing Ubuntu is that it has to detect Windows installed and seems to need information in the MBR to know this. Oddly it didn't seem to mention detecting XP but only Win7. When I previously had set up the hard drive with Windows 7 first and then XP from a backup as I described in my last post, it detected both. Which says something, I don't know what, about the MBR, but a difference I should mention was that Windows 7 had created a system partition at this time.

Changing the MBR seems excessive, and is usually only affected by the act of installing an OS, unless you use advanced tools for changing it. Ubuntu gave me a little experience with the MBR because of some issues that occurred, Ubuntu takes over the first startup of the computer. I am only concerned with the MBR because of Ubuntu, Windows seems much easier going. I could wipe a hard drive, then restore a Windows partition and it will start, but Ubuntu won't detect Windows and can't be used for a multi boot this time.

johnnpj: Thanks for the thoughful reply. (And I didn't mention it but I'm running Win7 64 bit and WinXP 32 bit). If I was starting from scratch I most certainly would install WinXP first as that approach seems to work better for most folks. Unfortunately, I started with a system on which Win7 was already installed (dual boot was an afterthought ), and rebuilding that system was more work than I cared to take on. Plus, as I understand it, using EasyBCD is supposed to make this easy, right? :)

brink: You've reassured me that clicking "yes" is safe. But what about the "proper boot files" the EasyBCD message refers to? Is there some other work I need to do besides just clicking "yes"? I've seen notes in this thread about copying ntldr and related files onto my "System Reserved" partition. Is that what this message is talking about?

And in general, if I can't get this to work, I'll just use the BIOS option to switch between boot drives. Having the two OSes installed in different drives makes that almost as easy as having a boot menu.

Thanks.

And just FYI I tried XP under VMPlayer but could never get my SoundBlaster Audigy 5.1 sound system working properly (for games). So I figured I'd try dual boot to get direct hardware access for sound. But it's been a few years since I tried the VM approach so maybe I should give it another go.

I have an old Dell that originally came with XP. I upgraded it to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I now would like to reload XP and its almost impossible to find any motherboards that will run XP. So, I followed another forum's instructions but they left out a few of the EasyBCD steps. I have an 125MB OEM partiion, then the Windows 7 partition and finally the Windows XP partition. I have another disc with several partitions so I end up with the Windows 7 in the C: partition and Windows XP in the J: partition. I checked the bootloader using the BCDEdit and it looks OK but then I went to the directory where ntldr should be and there is no ntldr. I tried running the XP install again but it always tells me:
"Windows failed to start"....... File: \NTLDR
Status: 0xc000000f
I have run EasyBCD numerous times but I am assuming since ntldr is not where it should be this will do nothing. I have started over numerous times but end up at the same place. Any idea how to proceed?
Thank you,