I'm planning a bit of an upgrade of my Windows 7 running machine (see spec).
What I hope to do is install a second internal hard disk drive and run Windows XP Home Edition from that, while running Windows 7 on the original HDD, dual boot.
What I would like to know is: Is it possible to run a dual-boot system from two separate HDD? What's the best size and brand of HDD to choose?
i have a new work laptop with xp sp3 on it. I want to install w7 64 bit as a dual boot, but only have 1 physical drive. i cannot remove my current installation as it is pre-build from work, but can partition the drive etc. However on trying to install w7 64 bit I get a message saying cannot install windows 7 on efi drive with mbr, not gpt. Can I do what I want without screwing up my xp installation?
View 5 Replies View Relateddual booting windows 7 home premium x64 with linux fedora 14 on dual independantly dedicated drives. i am a college student with moderate computer (windows) knowledge but am doing software development and would like to play around with some linux for a class. i have no prior experience with linux and have minimal knowledge of operation. i am currently running windows 7 and would like to keep it as my primary os. i do not wish to share media files across drives or os's, windows does that just fine as is and i dont want to get into a third drive. my current drive is a 1tb wd black caviar hdd. it is also currently 2/3rds full and the desktop is about 6 months old so i would rather not partition the drive for a dual boot. i would think that there are some other advantages for the os's operating independantly off their own drives other than if one hdd dies i should still have the other with its os still ok. i have read some topics about RAID configs with dual boot setups with dual drives like this but am not very familiar with RAID. is there a RAID config that would be beneficial in this situation? i currently do not have a RAID card. my tower internals are not very accessible and i dont like the idea of disconnecting drives depending on which os i want to operate.
View 5 Replies View RelatedAs currently configured, XP is on drive C:, Win 7 was added to drive E:, and the system is currently run as a dual boot. Attempting to boot without the XP drive present will yield a "NTLDR is missing" error very early in the boot process.
I have already tried the following:
(1) I moved the hidden Windows Boot Manager files (bootmgr as well as the associated Boot folder) from the XP drive root to the Win 7 drive root.
(2) After physically removing the XP drive, I rebooted to the Win 7 installation DVD, and used the "Repair Your Computer" option to pull up the "Recovery Tools". Then, using the command prompt utility, ...
(3) I attempted to write a new boot sector to the Windows 7 disk using the command: Bootrec /fixboot, - that yields an error though. The Bootrec /fixmbr claimed success, but ultimately did not make Win 7 drive bootable.
I had to reconnect drive C: just to boot into Win 7 again to write this. I do have files backed up, but to format and reinstall files would take many hours beyond just the time to transfer 400 GB of data, since I have dozens of purchased applications that need to be freshly reinstalled and validated as well. Basically I want my E: drive now to be my boot drive while the C: drive is reformatted and used for general storage.
Any idea how to make my Win 7 drive bootable? Do I need a partition program that is more adept at creating a viable boot sector, or is that even the problem?
I installed Windows 7 on a partitioned harddrive with vista on the other half. After the installation i have my boot menu with:Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows vista still works but when i try and load windows 7 i get a boot error message
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have dual boot with Xp and windows 7.when i log into my Xp all the restore points being deleted from windows 7.when i check the disk management information in 7 it shows windows 7 create a logical drive with my Xp primary drive.even i am hide the drive from both windows means Xp drive from windows 7 and vice verse.So i like to unmount or remove the drive partition of windows 7 from Xp and Xp primary from windows 7.So that they dont affect each others system files with being deleted the partitions.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI installed opensuse 12.1 on dual boot along with my other windows 7 installation. Installation of opensuse is successful and i can use it. But when I tried to use windows 7 on grub, it says bootmgr is missing. I've already encountered this problem a long time ago so i tried to use bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /rebuildbcd and bootrec /fixboot in the recovery console in the windows 7 DVD. Rebuildbcd and fixboot did not work and it said something like it cannot find my windows installation. I also tried bootrec /scanos, it returned a windows installation on D:\Windows but my windows is in drive C. I think this has something to do with me messing up the active partition in disk management a month ago but i already fixed it by setting the active partition to the system reserved partition. Only fixmbr is successful, but now i can't boot on any OS because it says: Missing operating system.I also tried bcdboot C:\Windows but it failed with a message that goes like: Failure when attempting to copy boot information..
View 2 Replies View RelatedI can't get Win 7 to boot after setting up dual boot (Ubuntu 10.10) on my GF's laptop. I'll describe the problem and everything that has been tried so far. REALLY hoping somebody has an idea, I'm getting desperate.I installed Ubuntu last night via the Live CD. Used the Live version to install alongside Windows and partition the drive, install Grub, etc. At reboot, after POST it would just go to a black screen with a flashing cursor. I could only run off the live CD. A forum member determined the Grub was trying to load from the wrong partition. We changed that and voila! Grub now loads properly. I can boot into Ubunto via Grub with zero problems. HOWEVER: when I try to boot into Win 7 from Grub, it just locks at the same flashing cursor of death screen. The 7 partition is till intact, I can see and access all the files on the 7 partition from within Ubuntu, however 7 will not boot. I have tried downloading and burning the Win 7 repair disk and doing all of the following,Running the automatic Start Up Repair - several times. All it does is remove Grub, but booting still goes to the flashing cursor and I have to reinstall Grub again to be able to do anything after POST.I have used the command prompt to run "bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr". Has the same effect as above.I have used all the bootsec.exe /fixmbr, /fixboot, and /rebuildBCD commands. Again, all have the same effect and I have to reinstall Grub to get anywhere.I don't have an installation disk to try and just do a repair install because Asus apparently doesn't feel that I would need one of these. All I have is the recovery disks from the Asus AIRecovery application that want to just re-format the entire drive and start over. This isn't an option. It's my GF's laptop (mine gave up the ghost last week) and we both have WAY too much highly important data on here. Not to mention she would castrate me . Now from all my research the only other thing I've come across that sounds possible is that the boot flag needs to be set to a different partition. Somebody had a somewhat similar problem and it turned out the way Dell set up the system the boot flag had to be moved to a recovery partition and it worked fine. I'm wondering if Asus has something similar going on, but I can't figure out how to move the boot flag. I'm going on 12 straight hours of working on this now
View 9 Replies View RelatedHow to Change the OS Name in Windows Boot Manager ?
View 0 Replies View RelatedI have installed a year before UBUNTU on my pc with dual boot (i.e. use either window 7 or ubuntu).the NTFS partition that contains the UBUNTU was corrupted and i wanted to take the dual boot from my PC. I used the instructions from the web site: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-...t-environment/but the disk management tool would not let me delete the NTFS partition.Could any one help me delete the NTFS partition and use just windows 7 as the only boot. step by step help would be great.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI got windows 7 running fine for a while now and ever since my XP did not boot anymore.I was not worried to much about it since i did not need it at the time.But now i really REALY need it,See i got all my Cubase projects in there and my cubase plug-ins al setup in XP and i need to get to the projects?At first it did not do anything and using easyBCD did not help either.I cpoied ntldr and detect to the root of C: wich contains my XP and now it shows the bootscreen but hangs on a black screen.The thing is right before the bootscreen shows i see the text" invalid boot.ini" flashing by very quick.I am able to enter that winXP install in safe mode and i tried safe/vga mode as well wich works but thats all.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have a laptop I bought a year ago on which a created a dual boot Win 7 (32bit)/Win XP SP3 install, each on a separate partition. It was my first Win 7/XP dual boot install, and my first personal system that I allowed to have a Win 7 install on it at all, so although I have plenty of experience working on pretty much every previous version of Windows, I have very little experience with Win 7 and dual boot configs.
Today about 2 hours ago my audio spontaneously stopped worked for no good reason, so after shutting down each program to see if that cured it (which it didn't), I restarted the system. Out of the blue, for the first time I've ever experienced it, I received the msg "MBR Error 1" - Press any key to boot from floppy. I don't have a floppy of course on my laptop, and if I press any key I simply get the same msg. I turned the system off for a few minutes to make sure it was a good cold boot, but every time I still get the same msg. I tried switching the BIOS setting from IDE to AHCI (IDE is required for XP to boot, AHCI required for Win 7), but I still get the same error msg before I'm even prompted with the OS boot selection, so it made no difference of course.
I looked up this issue and found various suggestions, but none of the ones I found took into consideration a dual boot config., they were all Win 7 specific solutions. I don't what to try and repair the MBR only to have it screw up my dual boot config and be unable to access XP, which is what I use almost exclusively, nor do i want to lose access to Win 7 if at all possible.
I had a backup HD of my complete system that I saved several months ago when I upgraded my HD, and I periodically refresh the most important files on it, so I'm currently running on the laptop in question using my old HD, and it's working just fine. Worst case I can just clone my old HD to my newer HD that's screwed up, but I'll still lose a lot of changes I've made to the OS since I upgraded the HD and have to reinstall and config a number of programs, so that's my last option. I'll also have to back up about 200GB of data from the newer HD which is much larger than my old HD, and then restore it back after the clone, something that will take a lot of time and unncessary effort if I can just fix the MBR.
I had Win XP on 1 HDD & installed Win 7 on a different HDD. I think I accidentally did a dual boot install because Win 7 won't boot without the the XP disk connected to the motherboard.
That was fine until my XP drive died yesterday. Now Win 7 won't boot. The first time I tried to repair, Win 7 was not even seen. so I booted into diskpart and made the partition active. Now it could be seen as an OS.
Then I did a startup repair. It did whatever it does & when it was finished I restarted the pc but it didn't boot I went back to diskpart and confirmed the partition was active. I went back startup repair and tried again.
This time it said it could not detect a problem, but it still will not boot. What else can I do? My pc is homebuilt. Right now I have the 1 sata drive, 2.53 ghz cpu, 4gb ram, onboard video & sound
I have Win XP 32 bit on my old drive. I buy Win 7 full retail and a new HD. I set bios to boot from cd etc. Win 7 starts up. It shows the 2 drives, so I select new drive...no problems. It starts install. I leave it to do its stuff.When I come back its up and all ok.I dint get any option to boot from XP. The drive was listed as "SYSTEM" but not old Windows or anything.
Also ASUS chipset drivers dont work and they were listed as 7 drivers.I tried Vista drivers but it normally shuts down and restarts. Nothing.
I installed Windows 7 32bt profesional on the D: partition on an XP machine (C. Dual boot worked fine, but since I had to reinstall XP I have lost the option to change partitions at boot.I want XP to be the default but with Win 7 to an option at boot.My boot.ini is currently:[CODE]
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have XP (x86) installed on one partition.
Last night I installed Windows 7 (x64) on a separate partition.
Anytime I had tried this in the past, using Vista, it always detected the Windows XP partition, and gave me a boot menu with "Earlier Version of Windows" option to boot to.
This is not so with Windows 7.
How can I get the boot menu to show both options, to boot to XP or to Windows 7?
I was having win 7 RTM and i tried to installl OSx86 in second hard disk
after few failure i successfully installed OSx86 in my secondary had disk now the problem is that i cant boot win 7
i changed boot order i tried windows 7 disk repair
but both failed
im getting some Boot mldr missing...
Actually even OSx86 is not booting i get OSx86 boot screen with two hard disk to select if i select windows disk it still says the same Boot mldr missing.
I setup an XP/Windows 7 dual boot on two drives. Currently C: Windows 7, D:XP
Love Windows 7 and now I'm ready to convert to single boot Windows 7.
I'm not real savy re. bcdedit so will need very detailed instructions
I did find the command line in Windows 7 by going through accessories but I'm scared to go further without help.
Eventually I want to clean up the D:xp and use it for storage etc.
I'm guessing this procedure may have already be written up but I can't seem to find it.
I wanted to dual boot Mac OS with my Windows 7 but everything I do it comes wrong, simply doesn't work. I tried dual boot with iatkos v1.0i, iatkos s3, iatkos v7 but still nothing.
View 3 Replies View Relatedi have a hard disk 500gb and i made three partitions.the 1st partition i installed windows 7 first.what i did today?i wanted to install windows xp to the 2nd partition.i installed and now that is the biggest problem.i cant in to windows 7 anymore.when i turn on my pc it has only windows xp.it hasnt dual boot to choose what operation system i want to in.so what to do?i want windows 7 and xp with dual boot to choose
View 9 Replies View RelatedI tried to make a dual boot with windows 7 and windows 8, but when I made a partition, the hard disk drive (C changed to dynamic.Can I still upgrade to windows 8?how can I convert it back to basic disk?I have windows 7.
View 2 Replies View RelatedVideo tutorial on how To Dual Boot Windows 7 ?
View 0 Replies View RelatedI had Windows 7 installed on my PC. Today I installed Windows XP in another partition. But now when I restart my PC I don't get a DUAL BOOT mode screen. It automatically logs in XP. How do I log in WINDOWS 7 now?
View 8 Replies View RelatedA friend of mine made a dual boot system on my laptop. The problem is it loads windows 7 without going to the boot manager screen to allow me to choose which one i want. My laptop came with xp and it shows that the hard drive has been split. And it also doesn't have the recovery in the laptop.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI recently purchased a pc that has Windows 7 on it. (2.6ghz and 4gb of ram). I have an old pc that is currently running XP. What I would like to do is move my XP drive over to my new pc and be able to dual boot both OS's but I am not sure what I need to do. Will simply plugging in my 2nd drive be sufficient or are there changes I need to make such as in the BIOS, etc?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am using Windows7 Ultimate x64 on a Notebook computer and so far OK. However, a network program came from government can run only on x32 of Windows. So that I am planning to have dual boot system now. I am wondering what will happen on my account and local mail-box.I have Windows 7 x64 on C drive and D drive is prepared for Windows 7 x32.
Q1: C drive has /users directory and my account info is there. What will happen on this directory if I install Windows 7 x32 with same user name and same password?
Q2: I am using Thunderbird with IMAP server. Can I use same mail-box both from Win x64 and Win 7 x32 time to time? I have moved most of mail to Localfolder.
I have win 7 installed in my PC on C: drive. I have a empty D:drive with 102 GB of space, in where I wish to install Windows XP. But during the installation process I came across with a error " setup could not find any hard disk". Upon research I find that SATA controllers in new computers doesn't support XP installation. In one of the forums they suggested to change SATA module in BIOS to modify from AHCI to ATA. When I try to do that it popped a statement " cache flash module" has to be disabled. I disabled it and modified the AHCI to ATA , which resulted in another pop up saying that " these setting changes will result in reinstallion of existing operating system" . procedure where i can install XP into D:drive without loosing the existing operating system.
View 3 Replies View RelatedSET UP THE USB KEY/HDD DEVICE With The Windows PE 3.0 (Windows 7)
Then Either Boot up into the PE Environment Or Windows 7 Environment
Open evelated as Adminstrator CMD PROMPT
Here i setup my variables - I keep all little scripts in text files as REUSABLE CODE:
I have a Lenovo Z575 with a AMD A6-3400M APU processor and 6 gb of RAM, I am running Windows 7. My Question is Is there a way to create a dual boot with my setup With Windows 7 as the default OS and Mac OS as a secondary OS?
View 2 Replies View RelatedIf I make a partition on my 500gb hdd (D for example) and format it as HFS+ and then change my BIOS settings so that D boots before my main C drive which is currently running Windows 7, and pop in an install disk for Mac OS X will it install normally with the .dmg file format? Or will I still have to find a way to convert the .dmg file still? I would like to have my computer dual booted so I can run either OS at any given time.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm running Windows 7 RTM 7600 and want to dual boot it alongside a mac OSX, is it as simple as just creating another partition on windows then booting up and installing the mac osx on that partition or is there more to do?
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