DUALBOOTING Qs?

[Pigbristle]

At the moment I'm dual booting XP & win7 32bit (7000) on different C & D partitions (same drive).


First Q? would there be a problem dual booting xp & win7 RC, 32 & 64bit together?

Q2, can I install win7 RC by mounting the image from XP (as i did with the earlier version)?

Q3, would I be better to format my D partition first from XP before mounting the RC image.
( because it still holds the old version of win7 on it)

or just mount win7 RC & let that do the formatting itself?

cheers ;o)

 

[Billb2]

Oh there's confusion here..........

You can't install OSs to different drives/partitions. No matter where you put the actual OS files, the install program puts the files the computer needs for post/boot onto the first sector of the boot drive. If you change the boot drive or remove it you will end up with two sets of post/boot files.

Windows install always see any previous installs and will automatically set up the boot loader to give you an OS choice menu during bootup. You just can't load an older OS after a newer OS (ie. no XP after Vista/Win7).

Microsoft says to load the OS files onto a separate drive/partition only because if you don't you end up with two My Documents, Windows folders, etc. on the same drive/partition. You can actually just install to a different folder on the same drive/partition as other installs are on if you want. It just confuses MS Help and Support though!

You can install as many OSs as you want. The record is somewhere North of 300.

Just go ahead and wack the x64 Win7 anywhere you want. If it's an empty drive/partition you can format if you like.

 

[Pigbristle]

Originally posted by: Billb2

You can't install OSs to different drives/partition.

I'm pretty sure you can! I already have two OSs on different partitions.



I dont think I made myself clear, I run xp on my c partition & run win7 32bit it on my d partition.

Am asking if i can overwrite my win7 32bit with win7 64 bit edition.

That would leave me with xp (32) & win7 (64) on the same drive.(different partitions).


Anyhow just to let you know, I tried mounting win7 64 in xp & it wouldn't have it.
So I mounted a newer version of win7 32 (7100RC) & that installed fine.

So either xp diddn't like me running 64bit, or maybe you have to boot from a disk to install the 64 bit edition.

thanks for trying to help anyhow ;O)

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Pigbristle
Am asking if i can overwrite my win7 32bit with win7 64 bit edition.

That would leave me with xp (32) & win7 (64) on the same drive.(different partitions).

I don't see why not...

I'm running Linux Mint x64 / Windows Vista x86 / Windows 7 x64 on the same drive (in different partitions) via GRUB - and it's probably the most stable machine I own!

 

[Bozo Galora]

Yeah you can run diff O/S on dif parts/HDD's
And like was said, install order is important
X32 and X64 is no prob - they are both NTFS
And you are correct X64 will not run FROM WITHIN a 32 bit O/S - gotta boot to a X64 disc or you will get not proper 32 bit app error message
Since there are only 24 drive letters avail, A-Z minus A and B, thats the max number O/S you can run unless you put more than one per Vol - which is an extremely bad idea
There are of course, several boot selector softwares that allow many more than 24, by using a TSR module that hands off the boot to bios before normal selection process
http://www.acronis.com/homecom...ctor/multibooting.html
But I dont like terminate and stay resident code on my PC's

The only difficulty you may encounter is sometimes (every PC config is different) is that some O/S will disappear from boot menu, or no longer boot. But there are fixer and edit programs like BCDeasy or BCDedit which can remedy all that, tho I do love to see the panic that ensues after it happens.