Dual Boot xp and win7

I'm finding a lot on Dual booting Win 7 and XP but not yet understanding what I'm doing. In one video I watched, there is a an option upon bootup called "Earlier Version" which I understand refers to earlier versions of Windows (or operating systems). The video goes into a lot of detail about installing Win 7 after resizing the OS partition to make room for the 2nd OS.

In my case, I already had Win XP on a small primary partition (F) and it is presumably still there and working, but I don't know how to boot up into that partition anymore. I reformatted the C partition for Win 7 and have been using it, but I would like to be able to boot up into either.

I've downloaded both Visual BCD Edit and Easy BCD and can see the option to "Edit Boot Menu" but I don't see the "Earlier Version" option, so I "Added a new Entry" using Easy BCD. The new entry it created for XP gives the location as C which is wrong, it should be F. I edited it and selected F, but I'm wondering why the entry for the location of XP looks different than the entry for Win 7? I'm thinking the Bootloader Path should look the same.

The bootloader path listed in Easy BCD for Win 7 is:

Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

For XP it is:

Bootloader Path: \NST\ntldr

Because of how the old XP boot.ini file looked, I was expecting the XP bootloader path to look more like the one that is currently listed for Win7.

Guess I'll try it this way and see if XP will boot.

 

I have dual booted and multiboot before (I did 5 OSes once) and I can tell you getting them to all play nice together, can sometimes be a pain.

Here's what you did, what you should have done and how to hopefully make it work;
Your drive C, in windows 7 most likely was the primary boot partition at the start of the bootable drive/HD, when you erased this, you erased the windows xp boot sector as well, so xp is still there, just you can't boot to it or access it.

You should have had a separate boot sector, say about 300 MB at the start of the boot disk/hd, which you would have created first and then installed the OSes afterwards, therefore if you were to reformat on OS, the others would still be accessible.

How to fix;
Pop in an xp boot disc/usb, and boot to it. It should recognize xp installed and you should see the option to repair the boot sector. Repair it.
If it is not automatically detected, follow these instructions to repair it.

NOTE: Since xp is older than windows 7 and microsoft did not foresee making another OS in their future, fixing xp will corrupt your windows 7 installation. So now you can boot to xp but not to 7. Your problem is now reversed.

Pop in the windows 7 boot disc/usb and follow a similar path as above but with a more user friend interface. Here the windows 7 disc will probe the pc and should detect both the xp boot loader, called either 'windows xp' or 'earlier version of windows' and the now unbootable windows 7 installation and ask to fix the boot sector. Allow it to do so.
After this fix, you will now be able to boot to both windows versions!

Happy Days Indeed

 

I tried the instructions Blujay linked you to for repairing XP quite a while back after dual booting XP and some Linux distros— they didn't work.

For XP to boot, when you use the Recovery Console from the XP CD the sequence is:

fixboot
enter
Y
enter
fixmbr
enter
Y
enter
fixboot
enter
Y
enter
exit

That will get XP to boot again. Then you can do as Blujay says to fix Win 7 and get back to dual boot with Win 7 and the "earlier version of Windows".

 

Rubbish. XP has never had any such repair option. Neither has it ever been the norm to create A 300mb boot partition before installing XP. That started with Win 7.

 

Let's not start a geek war here, but I know for a fact xp has a repair option for boot, I've used it many times before. I haven't for a while now though.

You are right here in that before installing xp it is not the norm to set a boot partition, but it is the norm to set a boot partition if you are going to dual boot or multiboot. Especially if some of those OSes are linux based and hence you are using GRUB 2 or are custom configuring EasyBCD.

 

For boot repair, doing it mdonah's way is one way, using the boot cd, which has those functions built in. You can also proceed with the install to the point where it sees the existing installation in which case you will get a repair option, in most cases, it will then detect that this partition is not bootable and fix the error.

 

Bluejay, that will not work for boot repair.

 

Really? I could have sworn I did that before!:-o

My apologies to everyone.
2 geeks against one is never good odds

 

There are specific circumstances where it will work, but repair is an idiot function. If a "link" is not present before, it will not be after. If its simply a file issue somewhere, then it will fix it.

From perusing this thread, it looks like the bootsector is missing the info altogether.

 

I am often the one with strange suggestions......

Dump XP, forget the dual boot entirely.

Although this can be made to work I think it is not a good idea. My own dual boot experiences with XP and 7 have not been all that favorable. Believe me, any time you spend trying to make this work is better used with a fresh Win 7 install and then set Win7 up like you want it.

 

I tend to agree. Although I haven't had any issues with dual or even triple booting with XP it is a case of flogging a dead horse. The only reason I still maintain an XP system (in a VM) is as a reference point when trying to help friends and neighbours who still use it. Otherwise it's best forgotten. Although it is very capable it just isn't safe to use any longer.

 

I don't even bother with dual boot any more. I've got two separate drives with the OSes I want on them and simply change boot sequence in BIOS depending on which OS I want to boot to OR if i'm lazy, disconnect one or the other drive (BTW, XP & Vista).

 

Ditto. With the onset of SATA and inexpensive storage, dual boot has become silly since you can just simply choose the drive too boot from.

 

Love the whole discussion! I thought since XP is on a different partition altogether, that it would have a different boot sector.

The reason I was interested in having it dual-boot, is because I have a great older piece of partitioning software that I wanted to use with XP. Since XP is 32bit and Win7 64bit, I can't use the software with Win7.

My biggest nervousness in reformatting and reinstalling is that I will somehow damage the partitions and lose access to the data drive. I've been looking through partition software that works with Win 7 and will probably try that out.

There are some annoyances with Win7 I haven't been able to overcome yet because I haven't had time. I don't know why I can't use the restore points. There seem to be so few, even after I increased the space for them. I can't see all the folders in the C drive that I used to be able to see. And now FF has gone and played hard-to-get with the simple menu at the top of the browser screen. Haven't taken the time to figure out how to get it to stay up there. LOL

 

I'm not too clear about where you are right now. Have you got your XP/Win 7 dual boot working yet? If not do you still want it? And as XP and 7 are already on separate partitions why are you thinking about using partitioning software?

Whatever, do not use old partitioning software on a Win 7 system. The free Partition Wizard is the best tool available and very easy to use. But beware! Repartitioning can cause totally unexpected problems, including your computer becoming unbootable and partitions simply disappearing, so do not venture down that road without first seeking advice based upon us seeing your disk management snap-in window and advising you on how to proceed.

A word about drive letters. In a Windows dual boot the active system will always be C, the other OS partition taking the next available letter, F in your case. When you boot the other OS that then becomes C, and the first OS, if visible, will become F. So your overriding of the letter assignments in EasyBCD was a mistake, let Windows do it. Also always give drives/partitions meaningful names to avoid possible confusion when drive letters change.

 

Along with what earthling said about the partitioning, for the Menu bar to show in FF 29 and above, right click an open area in the title bar of FF and select Menu Bar. The Menu Bar will then be in the upper left of FF.

 

Blow it all away for a fresh Win 7 install, do not partition. Windows 7 is stable enough you don't really need a data partition.
Make a bootable USB drive for your XP program?

 

Or use something like Virtualbox if the machine is beefy enough.

 

Mind if I disagree about data partition? By moving all the data folders off the system drive you can do a system image in a few minutes rather than hours and so are much more likely to do it regularly. And, should you need or want to restore a system image, perhaps because you got a virus, it won't overwrite your precious data either. It also makes the process of backing up your data so much more straightforward.

My 2p anyway.

 

That's what I do. Heck, I even have a Windows 98 virtual PC file somewhere, lol. Haven't actually mounted it in years.

 

Disagree all you like Earthling, I respect your position.
Most of the people I know run 512G to 1TB SSD's for boot. They automatically back up at night to an NAS or another hard drive so time is not an issue for backup. Time to restore the OS and data or just OS is usually not a problem. Last 512GB image I restored took well under an hour and the guy lost less than one day's data. The days of tape backup and multi hour restores are long behind me.

Separate drives for OS and storage make sense, partitions not so much. A hard drive crash will take both out whether partitioned or not. I agree partitioning used to make good sense, but we are no longer limited to 2GB drives and are much faster at backup and restore.

 

512GB-1TB SSDs and nighttime backups to NAS! This isn't your typical home user by several light years DOA. You are talking about your business customers, which the OP very obviously is not.

My advice is tailored for home users, typically with one internal HDD and maybe an external drive, and a data partition for them is without doubt the way to go.

 

Thanks for all of this. Where I am right now is that I have an old copy of XP on my F drive and a new copy of Win 7 on my C drive. Before I installed the Win7 on the C drive, I asked the Win7 installation disk to reformat the C drive which it apparently did in less than an instant. It was so instantaneous, that I decided to get out my old Partition Genie and have it reformat the C drive with its thorough option. I then installed Win 7. That seems to have been fine. I could see all my partitions and it only formatted the area that had been assigned to C.

Unfortunately, because I switched to Win 7 64bit, I can no longer use some of the older programs like Partition Genie. I've downloaded the Partition Wizard and will look at what it does.

I like the idea of doing an image disk, but my burner/reader does not like ISO. It grinds its wheels and doesn't seem able to read them, so the idea of making a bootable USB XP is a good idea. I don't know how to do that yet, but I'll look it up.

To Earthling:

In the past, I installed an xp for emergencies on a small extra partition in case the one on C didn't work. When I booted up with the emergency one, the one on C was still on C and the one on F was still on F - at least that's how they appeared in Windows Explorer. I don't want to repartition the comp, but my repartitioning software had a thorough reformatting option that I liked. I simply wanted to reformat the C drive with something better than the option available on the Win 7 installation disk because it doesn't seem very thorough. I'd like to be able to use my old xp programs (32bit) but I had wondered if there might be worrisome consequences doing that. I'm glad for the warning.

All this information is helpful and I appreciate the discussion very much.