Dual Boot Windows 7 & XP From Separate HDDs?
Aug 4, 2012
I want to combine my 2 desktops into one, since I never use both together and the older one is very dated by now (think Time/tiny computers old). My current machine is an Asus P5Q-E with a C2D and has one HDD on a SATA connection running windows 7 64bit. The old computer is a single core Athlon 2700+ thing with a pair of hard drives on a single IDE ribbon.What I want to do is put the hard drives from the old machine into the newer and be able to choose between Windows XP already installed on the old master IDE hard drive and Windows 7 on the newer SATA drive (I've only kept the old computer to run XP for compatibility), all the while keeping the old slave IDE drive as a slave.
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Mar 12, 2012
I would like to remove Vista from my dual boot setup. Here is how I got to where I am now.
I had Vista installed on my PC hard drive (was C. Later, I decided to install Windows 7 HP on a new and seperate HDD. I unplugged the Vista HDD and added the new HDD and installed Windows 7 as if from scratch (I was worried that the install would mess up all my files on Vista). After the Windows 7 was up and running, I then reconnected Vista redesignated it as drive E: and after some searching on how to, I created the dual boot using my Windows 7 disk so I'm assuming the boot file in on drive C: along with Windows 7.
I now want delete the dual boot and Vista so I can use the drive as a backup drive or possibly Win8. I have found several methods to do this but none that really have my specific situation.
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Nov 3, 2009
I've done some searching for this and found some similar issues but nothing fits exactly what I'm trying to do. I have been running Vista Ult. 64 bit for a little over a year and have loved it. It solved all the problems I had with XP Pro 32 bit on my hardware. I bought 7 Pro 64 bit through www.theultimatesteal.com since I'm taking some night classes. I forgot I couldn't upgrade from Ult.
to Pro so I had to do a clean install, which I did, on a separate drive. I have five drives in my system, C, D, and E are all 1TB while F and G are 1.5TB. C is where Vista is installed and G is where 7 is located. I'll be going back and forth between the OS's until I get everything the way I want it.
At that point I want to remove Vista and have 7 be the only OS. But I do not want to migrate the install onto the 1TB C: drive, I want to keep it on the 1.5TB drive but have it recognized as the C: drive. The install was done from within Vista from the download since my physical media has not yet arrived. So even when I boot into 7, it is seen as being installed on the G: drive; it did not make itself the C: drive.
So I'll need to get rid of Vista, get 7 to see itself as being the C: drive, get rid of the boot menu, and swap the drives and cables around to put my 7 install at the head of the HDD pack. I've already done a full system backup of my Vista install with Acronis TIH 2010. How do I need to go about this? On another note; why did MS only offer home and pro through ultimate steal? They offered Vista Ultimate. I mean, it is called ULTIMATE steal, not Pro steal afterall, and it would have made the upgrade process that much easier.
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Aug 28, 2012
I have got two separate hard drives one running Windows 7 one running xp. I need to be able to chose which os to run but currently I can only do so by pressing F12. I have tried EasyBCD but it wont work - does anyone know how I can do this?
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Dec 28, 2012
I'm new around here so, if you've seen this before, please bear with me.I have a computer with 3 hard disks in it as follows.Patriot Pyro 120 GB on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (installed first).WD Velociraptor 450 GB on Windows 8 Pro x64 (installed second).Samsung something 2 TB storage (forget about this one).The 2 operating systems are completely independent and functioning properly; obviously, the SSD (Pyro) is set to boot first in the bios and, at start-up, there's no boot manager asking me which OS I intend to use. Basically, every time I want to logon on my Velociraptor with Windows 8 I have to press F8 at start-up and choose from the given list of bootable HDDs.Now, I've tried EasyBCD without luck and I've read somewhere that, apparently, the Windows 7 boot manager can't boot a Windows 8 partition so, my question is, is there a way to add my Windows 8 Velociraptor to the boot manager of the first booting HDD, i.e the SSD with Windows 7?
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Aug 27, 2009
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.
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Mar 4, 2012
I currently have Windows 7 installed on two separate drives in my box. I can only set (select) boot sequence in the BIOS. If I recall correctly, way back when a boot selection menu would appear when I think I was running Windows 7 (when it first came out) alongside XP but that screen no longer appears with my current setup. Is there a way to get that screen back, or an alternate way to select the OS of choice without the hassle?
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Mar 3, 2011
I have separate ide drives one is installed with XP Pro and the other with windows 7. I want to have the choice of either os when the pc boots i.e. choose the drive to boot the pc.
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Dec 13, 2010
I have Window XP installed on Drive C:. My son installed Windows 7 on Drive E:. However, when the computer is booted up, it boots up in Windows 7, without allowing a choice. I suspect this can be corrected in BIOS, but don't want to screw it up.
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Oct 17, 2012
My computer has windows 7. I created a separate partition on my hard drive to install windows xp, but now when I try to install it I get an chkdsk /f error.
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May 22, 2012
install on my PC desktop a Dual Boot two separate HDD's Windows 7 32Bit on IDE drive & Snow Leopard OSX on SATA drive
My Pc ASUS P5PL2-E
Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz
2MB DDR2 NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
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Dec 6, 2009
Is there an easy way to dual boot on separate drives, i have installed windows 7 on 1 drive & vista on another. This was done independenly on the same machine as to say put vista on last year the got another hard drive took the vista drive out put new hard drive in & installed windows 7.I connected both. they see each other.I have read lots about reinstall one OS but nothing on if its already installed. IS THERE AWAY?
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Sep 22, 2012
I have read that using a computer specifically for financial transactions with known and trusted entities (such as a bank) is a good way to reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of your accounts being hacked by reducing the likelihood of inadvertently installing a malware, spyware, or virus by reducing internet sites visited. Assuming this is correct, I was wondering about dual booting one computer with two physical hard drives (each with its own OS) versus one hard drive with two partitions. I figure the former would be "more secure" since one drive would be isolated from any unwanted programs. However, since they shared a few things (motherboard and such), is this set up as "secure" as having two computers? If so, how does one go about setting up a dual boot with two separate hard drives of the same operating system using one computer?
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Oct 16, 2009
I have Windows 7 RC1, and am trying to install XP on a separate drive but am getting the following error:
"Setup could not load the keyboard layout file KBDUS.DLL.
Setup cannot continue. Power down or reboot your computer now."
I restart and am able to go back to Windows 7...Any ideas on how to get around this??
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Nov 26, 2009
I want to install 7 on a separate hard drive to see how it works & work indepenantly on it's own system. How can I if at all make it so when I am booting up I can toggle in between 7 & xp startups.
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Dec 1, 2009
i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it.
then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
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Jan 6, 2010
I currently have windows 7 ultimate in a Dell Gx270 P4 2.6ghz I know its old. And i want to Install Windows XP in another hard drive i have, but how do i make both hard drives boot, so i can select which one i want to boot.
I'm doing this because XP mode doesn't work in this computer. And i don't want to partition.
Most information i find in google requires partitioning and i don't want that.
If you know how please post it, or post the Links where i can find it.
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Sep 13, 2011
1. I have Windows 7 (64 bit) ALREADY installed on a SINGLE hard drive.
2. I have a clean blank other SINGLE hard drive upon which I will install Windows 7 (32-bit).
3. this is TWO individual hard drives, I want an Operating System installed on each individually. (Windows 7 on ONE, Windows 7 on the other)
4. I'd like a boot menu to come up giving me a choice to boot to either the Windows 7 drive OR the Win 7 (32bit) Prof. drive.
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Jun 5, 2012
I admit to being clueless when it comes to dual booting. I already have 7 X64 on my C: drive and a completely blank internal, formatted D: drive. How do I go about installing Windows 8 on drive D: and setting it up to dual boot?
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Mar 26, 2012
I have a common problem, which I see has afflicted many (wish I had read the forum b4 venturing forth). I have a Win XP SP3 install working on the C drive. No problems there and working for over a year. I wanted to set up a dual boot Win 7 on a separate disk. No problem in the installation.
When I went to boot the system I realised that the install had changed the XP install because when I removed the Win 7 HDD my old system would not boot. I now realise that I have to use the two HDDs in tandem to have a working dual boot, which is not what I had wanted.
Another silly mistake made was that I didn't set a restore point when setting out as I thought I was being careful in installing Win 7 on a separate HDD. Now I realise that theWin 7 boot loader has overwritten the old boot.ini file. Without a restore point how do I get back to a working Win XP boot.
I am wanting to return to old state and install Win 7 again, but this time disconnecting the Win XP drive. The system will detect a new formatted blank drive only and hopefully set up a stand alone Win 7 installation.
Am I making sense and more importantly can it be done given I didn't set a restore point on my Win XP installation before setting out? I have read in forums that in Win XP I can go to the boot.ini file via msconfig and manually make some alterations to make the dual boot go back to only booting the Xp install.
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Apr 10, 2011
Win 7 x64 Home Premium w/Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, v.1.1 (P45), works great in IDE mode. (N.B.: eSATA port is just regular SATA port w/cable as provided by Gigabyte.) Trying to install external eSATA HDD. First I enabled AHCI drivers via registry. Then I turned on AHCI in BIOS. When I save BIOS and reboot, boot hangs when DVD writer performs sniffer boot, i.e., HDDs aren't found.
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Sep 4, 2010
I have one HDD C: with Windows 7 64bit and another HDD from my previous dual boot PC with two partitions C: and E:, both winX pro.How is it possible to combine both HDDs, creating a multi boot system having as C: my Windows 7 drive?
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Aug 21, 2009
i have an odd 5900 RPM HDD that i need to swap out. i'm going to swap it out mainly because it's better suited for storage/backup rather than being my main HDD for usage/boot-up.
i don't want to reinstall Windows 7 (7100) and i want to copy everything from HDD "a" to HDD "b". any ideas/suggestions/comments?
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Feb 14, 2012
I am upgrading my HTPC that i put together a few years back to have a SSD as a boot drive to increase space, quiet background running and speed up booting, etc.Everything was running fine before trying to exchange the raptor for the m4. I had a big issue getting Windows installed on m4 but finally did a clean install when no harddrive was connected except the SSD to the original SATA port of the boot drive. Once I had windows installed, and i was able to boot up with only the SSD attached to the boot SATA port, I attached the 3 storage drives to their original SATA ports and got an error when booting... it paused in mid boot, then started searching for a boot disk in the DVD drive. I looked at the BIOS and the SSD is listed as 1st (port0) on hard drive boot order and hard drive is 1st boot priority. I unplugged all 3 storage drives and it booted up without an issue
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Nov 17, 2012
I've just discovered (after a panicked hour trying to work out what was going wrong) that my boot and system partitions for windows 7 are on different hard drives. The boot partition is on my 120GB SSD and the system partition is on my 320GB WD HDD.
This means that I have to have both hard drives plugged in for my system to boot. Obviously this isn't the best set up as if one of the hard drives fails then I'm screwed! Is there any way to fix this without having to re-install windows?
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Jun 4, 2012
So I tried installing Windows on my new machine and did waht seemed to be the recommended thing and plugged in only my SSD into the Sata port, leaving my other drives unplugged until after the installation. Everything went fine and I was able to get Windows 7 up, drivers were installing and everything was peachy, but Then I plugged in my other drives, and when I did so with the computer running Windows immediately recognized them and I could access them, as well as do whatever I wanted. However when I restarted I got the message BOOTMGR is missing.
Now, you may be thinking that this is a simple issue of it trying to load from one of those other HDDs, just set the boot order in the BIOS blah blah. But its not. I set the boot order in the BIOS to use the SSD, I set the SSD to the top of the list within the HDDS priority order and still nothing. I then took it a step further and instead of selecting the order manually told it to boot from the SSD flat out, boot from this drive and the same error message came up. I already did the boot from Windows disc, startup repair thing - didn't work.
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Sep 23, 2012
I have just installed a new P5G41T-M LX Series motherboard and two DDR3 x 2GB replacing DDR2. During startup a message says BOOTMGR is missing, press Ctrl Alt Delete to restart, on restart the same message is repeated.
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Mar 5, 2011
Currently running Win7(64-bit) in RAID-0 on 2 WD Caviar Black's.I just purchased a SSD drive.What I want to do is load Win7 on the SSD and use that as my main drive, while also keeping my RAID drives boot-able and in tact as they are now. (Thus, a dual-boot Win7 setup)Will the BIOS allow me to select which drive to boot from upon start-up? My mobo is an ASUS Rampage II Extreme.
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Sep 12, 2011
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?
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Feb 4, 2011
dual 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.
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Nov 30, 2011
have a 1TB drive partitioned into two 500GB partitions. One has everything on it, the other is a backup of the other partition (I know, a horrible idea, but I had no alternative). I now have a 60GB SSD that I want to use only as a boot drive, and store everything else that I possibly can on the 1TB hard drive.Here's my question: What is the best way to go about setting this up? Do I need to set up RAID? Also, will I be able to selectively restore the OS and anything else necessary onto the SSD from my backup partition?
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