Dual Boot attempt - what did I do wrong?

[rivethead]

My basic system is running XP on a 120gb sata drive.

I wanted to give Windows 7 a try, so I put in a 16gb IDE drive to run it off of. No problems - the computer recognized the drive and I reformated it.

I installed Windows 7 on the IDE drive no problem and I spent about 5 minutes playing with it - it seemed really nice.

But I shut down the computer to go get a bite to eat. Now when I boot up, the computer automatically goes into XP......it doesn't give me a choice of OS to load.

I went into System > Advanced > Start Up and Recovery Settings and the "Time to display list of operating systems" is checked and the time is 30 seconds (default - what I want). However, in the default operating system drop down list, only XP is listed. Nothing else.

So how do I tell the computer I have two operating systems and make it give me a choice at start up?

Thanks!

 

[rivethead]

Ok:

I've followed this almost exactly: http://lifehacker.com/5126781/...ows-7-with-xp-or-vista

Still no luck. I still boot directly to XP, no pause, no choice of OS.

FWIW, my IDE drive (with W7) is listed as drive 0. My SATA drive (with XP) is listed as drive 1.

Do I need to somehow "activate" or turn on the boot loader?

 

[Billb2]

For some reasom the W7 install disn't "see" the XP that was there already.
Were both drives hooked up when you installed W7?

While you can edit XP's boot loader (boot.ini) with notepad, that isn't the case with Vista/W7. They use a completely different boot loading scheme. You need BCDedit or EasyBCD to edit their boot loaders.

 

[SickBeast]

If you change the boot order of the drives in your BIOS it should fix it, or else you can install the Windows 7 boot loader into the MBR of the XP hard drive. You will need to google this; I have done it myself.

 

[rivethead]

Billb2 - yes, both drives were hooked up when I installed W7.

SickBeast - I was wondering if the boot order of the drives didn't have something to do with it. I'll give it a try. I always thought it was odd that my existing (SATA w/ XP) drive was "drive 1" and then when I added the IDE drive it became "drive 0" and not "drive 2".

Thanks for you responses!