Installing Windows 7 With Windows XP But On Separate HDDs

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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