How To Dual Boot Win7 And Winxp On Separate Hard Drives ?
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.
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.
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.
I am running Windows 7 64bit. My printer only has 32 bit drivers. Is there any way I can get a windows 64 bit 32bit printer emulator? If not then I have to install 32bit Windows XP on my computer as well. Now after I partition my hard drive, will I be able to get that space back? For ex. I make a partition 50GB for windows XP, Will I be able to put that 50GB back into my windows 7 partition if I delete Windows XP?
Will the 2 partitions be able to communicate with each other? Like will I be able to take files from the partition that Windows XP is on if i'm logged on my Windows 7 and vice versa. Will I also need to install antivirus and things for Windows XP? One last question... I have 9MB unallocated(lol) How do i get that back into my hard drive?
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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,
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
I'm in IT (surprise surprise) and I have extra hard drives coming out my ears. I want to move my Win RC x64 install to a larger hard drive.
Whats the easiest way to do this? I know its possible, I used to ghost XP machines at the local highschool (dont fret, they were all licensed).
I'm toying with the concept of making a fresh install, and doing something to the effect of a system restore to it, or something like that.
On a slightly less related note, my system is more powerful a machine than i ever expected to own two years ago. Its a core i7 machine with 12gb of ram and Windows 7 installed on a raptor. Why doesn't a fresh install of Windows 7 simply fly? Sure, multitasking can be done almost infinitely (lol), but there's literally no speed increase in app startup times, opening "my computer" or the device manager. None of it works as quickly or smoothly as i would have thought.
Also, again, where can i find a simple list of changes between RC and RTM?
I have an SATA drive with WinXP loaded. I decided to use a spare EIDE drive to load Windows 7. I have installed Windows 7 with no problems. I never see the Windows boot manager to choose which OS I want to load, but I can load either one by changing the boot order in BIOS. I can see the EIDE drive from XP, but not the SATA drive from Windows 7. How can I get the boot manager to work and let me choose which OS to load?
I am running Windows 7 Version 7260 on a dual boot with Windows XP3. I can get internet/network access when operating under Windows xp3, yet if I shut down completely then re-start into Windows 7 I have no internet access.
However, if I start up in Windows XP then reboot into Windows 7, internet access is retained and available in Windows 7. All very curious.
Troubleshooters does not help claiming I have a missing cable connection.
I have (2) internal hardrives in my current pc, what i want to do is install a separate Win 7 OS on each. I have read that you unplug the main hardrive which already has the Win 7 OS on it. And I proceed to plug in the other hard drive, but my pc never allows my to install the Win 7 CD Rom Install disk. I keep getting the "No Boot Device Available error" It sees the hard drive and the CD Rom when I try to click on either i get the No Boot Device Available Error. When both Hard drives are plugged in there is no problems windows boots fine. How can I get the second hard drive to install the CD Rom so I can have (2) separate OS systems on the two hard drives. I am using a Dell Precision T3500 if that has anything to do with it.
I have a SSD with Windows 7 Home Premium x64. To boot off it my bios needs to be in AHCI mode. I also have Windows XP Prof SP2 x84 on a Sata2 drive and too boot off of that I need to be in IDE mode. Also when I boot into the XP drive it rewrites the boot BCD and I need to load up the Windows 7 install disk and do a repair to get back into Windows 7. While EasyBCD will allow me to fix that issue I can't imagine it will allow me to do the whole AHCI/IDE combo will it?
The motherboard died on my 3-year-old Compaq, so I just ordered a new computer that comes preloaded with Win7Home Prem x64. It was from Dell Outlet so I couldn't choose the OS. I've been using MCE (XP pro 32-bit) for several years and love it.I'm worried about program and hardware compatibility with Windows 7 x64. I don't use very graphics-heavy apps like CADD, Photoshop, etc. I only plan to do a little video editing with my .avi clips. I also have an older version of Replay AV that I use to record live streaming radio. I don't want to buy a new scanner (Canoscan LiDE 20 - no x64 drivers!) so here are my options:
A-Partition the new 1TB drive for dual boot setup with Windows 7 Home x64 / WinXP Pro (32-bit). I would buy the XP Pro OEM Branded DVD.
B-Install my old 200GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200 as a second drive and run XP programs and scanner from that.
C-Buy Win 7 Pro 32-bit OEM Branded discs, remove Windows 7 home x64, and do a complete new install with the new discs, and hope that my XP programs work with XP Mode. (new i5 processor supports virtualization)
in the past i had a seperate personal hd for my work laptop I would take my work HD out then install my personal drive in and it worked great. But now on new laptop there is a biosandhard drive can I still switch hard drives or will it not work or will my work know I swap. Them.
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.
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.
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.
I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop a few days ago. Unfortunately I can detect my hard drive beginning to fail in the last day or so.
I have the single licence single PC edition.
Windows 7 has been activated on my system, can I replace the hard drive and reinstall Windows 7 to a new hard drive on my PC?
I am guessing it is ok as I suspect my PC serial no. is stored in a Microsoft database somewhere when activated and therefore not dependant on the hard drive.
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?
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.
I have vista installed on a seperate 500gb hard drive. I keep all my media stored on 4tb of other harddrives separately. they are setup as dynamic disks spanned together. Once I upgrade will those drives still work properly and will I loose any data?
