Run XP And Windows 7 On Same Computer Without Dual Booting
Aug 10, 2012
This is what I am attempting...I want some time to learn Win 7's ins and outs...before committing to it. I know how to dual boot...don't want that. If I set up like this image, will I be able to use the F8 boot menu to choose the HDD I wish to boot from...or will I just have to disconnect the XP drives and only connect the Win 7 drive. I want to keep the MBR's totally separate.
I see THREE possibilities:
1. F8 will work and just not SEE the other Windows install...which is fine.
2. F8 will work and Win 7 will try to take over all three drives.
3. F8 will work, but when booted to the Win 7 HDD, will wreak havoc with the drivers, IF it sees the other install.
Background: I use my computer for 2 reasons. One is for general (internet, MS office, etc...) The other is for serious Digital Audio recording using Cakewalk Sonar and 100's of plugins and effects. My xp systems I have always dual booted xp with xp. One for fun and one for music. XP system for music was tweaked and optimized for music (no internet, no email etc.)
My Problem. I bought the Family pack (3 Pc's) upgrade knowing that I would install at least 2 versions of Win 7 on my computer.
My first installation (Sunday) went fine and was installed on the 500 GB HD. Startup was fast. On Monday night I bought another HD (750 GB) and installed another version of Win 7 on the new harddrive for my music stuff. It was working fine. 2 new versions of Win 7 on new brand new sepatate HD's.
Yesterday (Tuesday), I got home and booted up to Win 7 Music system and was told to run chkdsk which it does and noticed the startup was much slower once it rebooted. So I try to install some of my music programs and I get an error that the file system is now corrupt. I cannot install programs or even copy things from another drive to that partition. When I tried to install programs another thing that popped up was an error about finding something in the Temp directory. I ran chkdsk 3 times and it did not fix the problem.
Appartently my 2nd version of Windows 7 has been corrupted. Or the file system has been corrupted. I can run the few programs I installed on Monday night but I can not install new ones. Has anyone installed two working versions of Win 7 on the same computer (separate partitions) and run into any problems? Any ideas? With the power of Win 7 and my new computer do I even have to worry about separate operating systems for General Use and Music Use?
This computer orignially had Windows 7 installed on it. I have just now installed XP on a second partition. I was expecting bootmanager to come up every time I booted, asking for either XP or 7. To my suprise, it boots straight onto Windows XP. how to modify msconfig (via XP) to add the W7 boot?
I have XP and considering having a dual booting system. I'm a bit confused as to whether I need an upgrade version of Windows 7 or a "full version," since they will be on different drives. I'm further confused having read that when up upgrading from XP to W7 using upgrade software, its necessary to do a clean install. Isn't a clean install the same as installing from scratch and therefor a full version of W7 is required?
I currently have Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit installed on my computer on a SSD drive, and I'm trying to install Windows Server 2003 on a second hard drive (regular SATA II HDD).When I boot with the Windows Server 2003 CD, everything seems to be fine... it pops-up the usual blue screen and the drivers are loading, but once the drivers are done loading, I get this error message:"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.
why this message pops-up and prevents me from installing Windows server 2003? Is it possible to have a dual boot with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2003?
I'm considering buying an XP installation CD/license. Are these still available? And if so, what's the price? And also, how would I go on about dual booting? I heard you have to shrink your partition to fit the XP installation on (because I only have one hard drive). Is there a tutorial that tells you? Sorry if this all sounds a bit newbish, but I'm not too experienced with this part of computing even though I reformatted my PC about 3 times.
Just what the title says, how do I set up dual booting between Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and Windows XP MCE 32 bit, with both OSes already installed on two separate HDDs. It has been suggested that I use EasyBCD to add the XP MCE entries to the Windows 7 boot menu. It has also been suggested that when I want to boot into the XP MCE drive, that I change the boot order in the BIOS. Would this still screw up the MBR for Windows 7?
Is it possible to dual boot Windows 7 Pro, one partition being a 32 bit system, and one being a 64 bit? I have a program that just won't run on 64 bit, and my processor doesn't allow for Virtual PC, so can I have a separate partition with 32 bit Windows 7 Pro running?
I was wondering if there are any issue with dual booting Windows 7 pro 64 bit on an internal SSD drive. I currently have Windows 7 pro 64 bit on a 500gb 7200 hard drive plus a backup 1 TB 7200 rpm drive; but I wanted the speed I would get by installing win7 pro 64bit on a 250gb SSD drive. I would basically only install specific essential software like Adobe Premeire Pro and Photoshop, among others. I originally was going to use the SDD drive as a scratch disc but after reading, I thought it might be better to just install Win7 on the SSD drive. This way I could also experiment with what would be the best configuration. I still get confused about scratch disc and how useful they are if you have plenty of memory.
As an alternative to re-installing all my programmes etc. I have recently considered installing Windows 7.0 on one of my three harddrives. I understand that this is perfectly feasible, however, my main aim is to be able to address more ram, hence W 7.0 64 bit. Would Vista 32 still run happily with 8GB or more of memory in the mobo?The hd is 500 Gig.
I have Windows 7 64-bit and I want to install Windows XP 32-bit for extra cross-compatibility. I know 32 bit apps can work in 64 bit but I also need my printers and other devices working.
I need help with a guide to dual-boot operating systems but I can't find a guide that includes Windows 7 as the first operating system. Could anybody help me by pointing me in the right direction?
I have been dual booting XP Pro 32-bit and Vista Ultimate 64-bit for some time now but haven't really found a good way to delete XP Pro (my first installed os) leaving my Vista os able to boot up normally. I have scoured the forums and was about to delete a lot of files from the XP partition but leaving the loader files and root files alone. This would enable me to free up a lot of drive space. Currently the 2 os's reside on a RAID setup one partition for XP and another for Vista.
OK so I have found the Windows 7 forums and thinks that it would be good idea to replace XP with Windows 7 but the upgrade options for the Beta do not allow upgrade to Windows 7 from XP.
If I upgraded XP to Vista 32-bit what would happen to my boot files etc etc and could I then further upgrade to Windows 7 leaving that and Vista 64-bit dual booting together?
Or is this a complicated way to do things?
What I really want to do is delete XP Pro - I am rather fond of Vista now and seems very stable. But I do not want to be faced with boot problems after deleting.
I currently have installed on both os's, Acronis's OS Selector and BCD Edit.
I really need a very accurate method rather than a theoretical answer - someone who has done this successfully please. I have spent too long wading through forums looking for a way of successfully deleting XP and receiving maybe this will work or maybe that type of answers.
i've got a macbook running Windows 7, and i want to dualboot it and get osx back on there. should be easy, osx on a macbook, right? **** me.
i did a bit of homework first, and reviewed what other people have done for dualbooting, but all of the threads are ancient and address different specific issues so here are the steps i went through:
-created a second partition in Windows 7, ntfs, made it active
-rebooted with an authentic osx snow leopard disc
-osx installation startup began
-went into disk utility to format it to "journalled" and get this error: "Volume Erase failed with the error: Could not modify partition map"
it won't let you install until the disk is formatted correctly..
I installed Fedora on my system preinstalled with windows 7. Now during booting Windows 7 is not appearing. It is only showing Fedora. But it should show both the os and allow us to choose.
My laptop is currently dual booting Ubuntu 11.04 and windows 7. Recently windows has been taking forever to boot up (at least 2 - 4 minutes), it runs perfectly fine when booted. I stuck in the CD to see if there was any start up errors but I cannot seem to access that due to the grub menu. Is there anyway to fix this issue?
I have 3 drives, C:, D:, and E:. E: is just a storage drive. XP was originally installed on the D: drive. I installed Windows 7 on the C: drive following the instructions at Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP. After installing Windows 7, I didn't get an option to boot XP so I used EasyBCD to add an XP entry to the boot menu. That worked, but after I boot into XP, if I shutdown or restart I get an error message about the Windows Boot Manager that says
"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem ... etc ... File: ootcd Status: 0xc000000f Info: an error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data."
Then I have to run startup repair from the Windows 7 disk. But then I just get stuck with Windows 7 and no boot menu entry for XP. If I try EasyBCD again, the same process results.
I have Win XP on a separate HD and I am upgrading to Win 7 on a new HD. How do I do this and prevent dual booting from being installed on the Win XP HD. I want to be able to remove the Win XP HD from the system and just run the Win 7 HD.
I am an IT student who is forced to use a VM to run Windows 7 Professional and Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. I currently own a Macbook Pro and am not able to afford another windows based pc for school. I was told by a teacher to Dual Boot both of these under the same partition. Ive tried to understand all of this and ask ?'s but I'm getting really lost.
I have a laptop with twin HDDs and I have Vista on the C: partition on Drive 1. I created a new partition G: on Drive 2 and, while Vista was running, inserted the Win 7 disc and started installation to G:. All went perfectly and I have retained my original partitions with drive letters and labels, plus a new G: partition labeled Win 7. All seems to be working fine.Now I heard from a geeky friend that BOTH OS should be running on C: and that windows has some clever way of making that work. Is this true - and are there any disadvantages continuing installing MANY apps on G:?
I have a laptop that has Vista installed on it. I have an upgrade disc for Windows 7 and I am thinking about performing a "clean installation" over the Vista OS - which I know is allowed, on the following link;click here Now, I would like to create another partition (on the same hard drive) and install Vista (using the same disc that it came with the laptop) onto that blank hard drive partition
I have Ubuntu dual booting on Windows 7. After the bios load, is there anyway that I can make Windows 7 boot right away without selecting anything on the OS selection? The same way it would boot without dual boot...if that makes any sense.If the above exists: Let's say I use Windows 7 all the time, but one day I decide to boot into Ubuntu. Is there a way that I can press a button, before Windows 7 loads, to make the OS selection come up?I tried to make myself as clear as possible and I hope that you understand what I'm trying to say.
I bought each of my twin sons a Dell Inspiron 15R. As teenage boys do, they really mucked them up with every kind of virus and x-ware out there. After not being completely successful cleaning them up with various anti-what-ever programs, I decided to reformat and do a clean install. Problem is, Dell no longer furnishes a hard copy of the OS that was installed at factory. Apparently, they have partitioned the hard drive and installed all original software in that partition, and provided a PC Restore program that will access all software and re-set-up the computer to the state is was when purchased. After doing this, everything worked fine as it claimed it would. Personally, I find it to be the best thing that Dell has done with MS in years.
My question is this...Can I dual boot this set-up with Linux (which I use exclusively, and my son wants to learn), or will this partition that Dell is now using cause me real problems in the case that I may need to perform a future PC Restore?
I currently have a standard computer setup with a windows 7 operating system installed. What I want to do is dual boot with Windows 7 as my primary os but using an esata cable connect the hard drive from my laptop to the computer and have this as a secondary boot option. The laptop hard drive has a full install of vista on it. Is this possible, every time I think about doing it I worry about the drivers on the laptop hdd and how those will react to my main computers hardware as obviously the laptop hardrive is setup to look at the laptop hardware.
I received a laptop from my work which is currently running Windows 7 enterprise. Unfortunately, our administrator is a bit on the overzealous side about what to-and what not to block, and the whole "I will watch you through the built in webcam" shenanigans, I'd like to dual-boot the enterprise OS with my own Windows 7 home premium. Is this possible?
So currently I have Windows Xp and Windows 7 /32bit installed. Windows XP on C Drive and Windows 7 on D.I would like to install Windows 7 /64 bit over windows XP so I can use more than 4G Ram. So I would have both 32 and 64 bit windows on the same PC. I have few questions: Can I somehow upgrade from XP to 7 without losing data and files? Will I still be able to go on the Windows 7 /32Bit?
I have this machine that was dual booted with XP and Win 7. Everything was working gravy. I put up the RC on the machine and now I get NTLDR erros when trying to get into XP.
Physical setup is as folows:
Sata Drive with three partitions (XP, Storage, Storage 2)
IDE drive with One partition (Windows 7)
Boot order is Sata, then IDE.
The boot loader comes up and I can get into windows 7 no problem, but when I choose the XP I get NTLDR errors.
I redid the boot loader with easybcd, but I still get the errors, I've copied NTLDR and NTDETECT.com on just about every drive except my card reader (haha).
Can someone walk me through getting XP booting again? I tried doing the /fix mbr thing but I can't remember the password for the XP install to get into the recovery console.
I am dual-booting both x64 of Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows Vista SP2 Home Premium, and dang, I dont understand how anyone can think 7 looks like vista..and speed?..vista has sluggish reactions compared to 7..more jerky graphics as well..
What would be the easiest way to do a dual boot? Would it be:
1)Use a second hard drive, one with XP one with Windows 7? If I did this would I be able to plug the XP drive in and see it as my D: drive? What if I went and switched it back in the bios to the XP hard would I see windows 7 stuff in D:? I’d like to do this since I have two hard drives one that is brand new.
2) Just partition my current hard drive and dual boot. If I did this would I be able to switch back and forth and see files on both boots? Also what about if I added my other new hard drive would both see it easily?
I don’t know much about dual boots so please fill me in and answer my questions.
I would like to dual boot Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 on my Macbook Laptop. I want Windows 7 to be the main OS on the laptop with the Mac OS on a smaller partition. I've done dual booting before but never on a Mac.
I have found guide for dual booting Windows 7 with XP or Vista already installed, but not the other way around.
I allocated some free space from my C drive for the XP install. I installed XP, but when I restarted my computer, I got this error, "A disk read error has occurred; press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart dual boot".
