Dual Boot Choice Of Windows 7 And XP On Different Drives?
Jan 8, 2012
I have RAID 0 on two hardrives booting up 64 bit Win 7 running as SATA 0 and SATA 1.I have a third drive on SATA 2 from my previous Dell XPS which booted 32 bit Windows XP. How can I set up the system to give me a choice of either system?lthough Win 7 64 bit is faster, many of the 32 bit XP software programs will not run very well on Win 7 and in addition Win 7 doesn't allow the setting of of shortcuts the way XP does which means that Win 7 inevitably requires two key strokes to XP's one stroke.
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Apr 23, 2011
I have Windows 7installed on one drive and Windows Vista on another drive. When I boot up the computer it goes directly to Windows 7. It recognizes the second hard drive in Windows Explorer but it doesn't give me a choice as to which operating system to run from.
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Jul 22, 2009
I have a problem with running Windows 7 (RC, 7100 i think) and XP on the same machine:
I previously had 2 XP installations - one on the C drive for general useage and one on another drive for audio recording (both are SATA) My C drive XP has been slow and rubbish for a while and so I thought I would reinstall windows on that drive, which I've done before a few times. Then I thought I'd like to try Windows 7 so I installed that. During the installation I formatted the C drive (looking back on it maybe not so clever - there was no data I needed on there but maybe I deleted important files?) and installed 7 on there.
Now, my problem is that I can boot into windows 7 fine, but I am having real difficulty in getting XP to work, due to various things. I have used easyBCD to try and sort out my OS choice at startup, as per some walkthroughs on this forum. When I reboot I have a strange problem where I cant see the screen where I choose the OS, but I know its there because the computer waits for a bit, unless I press enter (to choose windows 7) or down and enter (to choose XP) - so its there but not being displayed on screen.
That's not such a problem, but when I choose XP from the OS select (or what I assume is XP given that I can't see it) the computer just restarts right from the beginning. There was no ntldr in the D drive (where the XP installation is) so i copied it from the XP installation disk.
Also, when I used to be able to get into the 'Studio' XP installation, it thought the D: drive was the I: drive, if you see what I mean..
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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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Jul 31, 2010
I've already done with Dual Boot Windows XP and Windows 7. Initially i created 75GB of Raw partition when XP was installed.
1. When I goto XP my OS folder location is C:Windows and Windows 7 folder location I:Windows
2. When I go to Windows 7 my OS drive is C:Windows and Windows XP drive is D:Windows....
Currently, I'm not facing any problems, But wanted to know how & why its happening like that...??
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Dec 21, 2010
I'd like to set up two separate Windows 7 installations on my computer. I don't know whether this is possible, I know I can set up a dual-boot environment with an older version of Windows or Ubuntu. I have an OEM version of Windows 7 - is it possible to have the computer prompt me for which drive to boot?
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Jul 26, 2012
dual boot windows 7 on two drives. how can i uninstall one
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Jul 26, 2012
dual boot windows 7 on two drives. how can i uninstall one
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Oct 10, 2012
My hard drive crashed. Bought a new one. Cloned another hard drive onto it. Old computer won't recognize the cloned drive but does in BIOS. I think the CPU was destroyed while cleaning the dust because it has prongs that clamped down and I couldn't see exactly where the gold pins were going to set in. Was very careful, but either the CPU is bad or the mother board is bad. Tested all other components in the working computer. Battery is fine. New cloned hard drive is fine. So I installed the cloned drive as a second OS drive in the working computer.I now have to share the computer with my husband until I get a new CPU or MB for my better, more expensive computer.Is it possible for him to log into "his" computer using "his" 1TB Sata HD, and then for me to come along and log into the cloned drive in his computer (2TB Sata HD) and do all of my work from that drive, so that when my own computer gets fixed, I'll have all the files I've worked on and programs installed that only I need on it and ready for use in my own computer, taking it out of my husband's computer after mine is fixed?
I'm sure I can go into BIOS and change the boot order whenever either one of us sits down to use the computer, but he's not going to want to do that each time, being pretty much computer illiterate as he is. Is there some other way to do a user switch easily during any time of the day when we need to share his computer?.
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May 24, 2011
I have Windows 7 Home Premium, which has a C drive and a D drive. Two hard drives.I just want to know WHY there are two drives. Why was the choice made to have the two drives as opposed to one?
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Dec 6, 2011
I have a M2010 running Windows 7 ultimate using raid. I was wondering if I put in a hd in the secondary spot if I could add XP Pro and dual boot. I have some things that work better under XP. I put my old laptop drive in and set the bios raid to auto detect/ata. It booted to 7 and installed drive E:. I didn't change any Matrix software settings so it's a raid/non raid setup.
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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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Jun 7, 2011
I know at this point it's tricky and i should have done it before installing Windows 7 however...My new physical primary drive now has Windows 7 pro running exclusively the whole partition (cI'd like to add the drive that had XP pro running on the same PC.i'd like to get this running as a duel boot without corrupting the XP drive.
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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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Aug 28, 2010
Here's my situation: I use 32-bit Windows 7, however, once per month I need to use 64-bit Windows 7. So I would like to install 64-bit Windows 7 to another drive. However, I don't want to see the dual boot menu on every restart. I only want to temporarily switch to 64-bit by pressing F8 (or whatever) to change booting device at bootup.
What's the proper way to do this?
Many years ago I used to have a situation where I had WinXP on one drive and WinXP on other drive. I could switch my C: (with WinXP) at bootup. It worked, except there was a problem: In some situations C:Windows and D:Windows or Programs Files were getting mixed up, automatically Start Menu pointed suddenly to D:Program Filessomething without asking me. I had used a clone software to clone the drive so that might be the reason why they mixed up together. Eventually removing the other drive might've crippled the system even my intention was to have two separate operating systems, just in one computer.
Basically I would like to have two C: drives with Windows 7-32bit and Windows 7-64bit. So in case one drive breaks, I'll have a very quick backup system ready.
Is it a stupid idea to disconnect the current C: drive and then install the new Windows to C: and then put the first drive in as well? Then I wouldn't have the dual boot menu, which might be what I want.
Is it possible to hide the dual boot menu, have it load 32-bit as default but still have a possibility to bring up the dual boot menu by pressing some key at bootup? In that case, is it possible to remove either drive and still boot up without problems?
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Jul 14, 2009
hp providian has two 512meg hdd's I have vista 32bit installed on one hdd
Would like to install windows 7 64 bit on the other hdd as a dual boot.
Never done dual boot before. there are some programs on the second hdd it
only has one partition. Can I just install it on that drive as is and still have the
programs remain,or do I have to split the drive into 2 partitions?
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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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Nov 4, 2009
I have Windows 7 64-bit and Windows XP installed on 2 different disks. Unfortunately, when i installed one, the other hard drive was not connected.
Hence, the default dual boot option would not come along.
Now, I have to choose to boot from either of the HDD from the BIOS setup.
Is there a way i could attach my XP bootloader to Windows 7 boot loader?
I remember seeing somewhere that Windows 7 boot loader has a notion of supporting XP boot as well.
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May 19, 2010
1st. Installed XP on IDE drive, 2nd. installed a Sata drive, installed Windows 7 on that drive, want to remove the IDE drive, is it as simple as disconnecting the XP drive and do a startup repair, or is there going to be an issue with the XP drive being the Active drive, will startup repair make the Sata drive the Active drive?
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Oct 20, 2009
I just have a question regarding installation of Windows 7 to dual boot with XP.
Am planning on doing a clean install on two new SATA hard drives. Will first attach one drive and partition and format it when I install XP.
Should I then go ahead and attach the second drive and partition and format it using XP before I start my installation of Windows 7?
Or, would it be better to attach the second drive and then partition and format it when I install Windows 7? Am thinking that the second approach would be better. By the way, this forum is a great resource.
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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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Nov 20, 2009
I have a hp dv 6000 i was trying to dual boot my pc with win 7 and xp pro, with win 7 installed first. in order to install xp i had to disable my sata native. I can dual boot but on my xp its seem I'm missing alot of drives. I have no internet or sound,
any suggestions?
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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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Jan 5, 2013
I have Windows 7 installed alongside Ubuntu 12.04 on my desktop. Recently I've got a problem, when I boot the computer the Motherboard graphic appears and goes black, the OS choice screen doesn't appear. As I know from previous experiences the first choice is windows 7 and the second choice is Ubuntu I use arrow keys to select the OS with the screen still black, the screen appears only when the Log On screen appears (in both OS).
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Nov 30, 2009
When I first installed Windows 7 on my computer I used a partition. So I could either boot from vista or from Windows 7.. So when the computer turned on, it gave me a choice from "Vista" or "Windows 7".
Now I deleted the Windows 7 partition and did a clean windows 7 install over the Vista.
The problem is when I boot up the computer, it still gives me the choice saying Windows 7 and also another Windows 7.
Any ideas on how to just have it automatically boot up windows?
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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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Nov 12, 2009
As 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?
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Oct 14, 2009
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
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