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Need a dual boot Win7 32bit / XP instructions.

C

Compman55

Golden Member
I have an old p4 I want to make a dual boot with only one 160GB hard drive. I am not sure how to do this anymore. I did it with win2k and xp, but never had the need with newer OS's.

I would prefer to not have to use partitioning software.
 
Possible way without using any other software, assuming you're starting with a newly-formatted drive:

- Install Windows 7
- After install, go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management
- Shrink the partition by the amount of space you want for the second one, form a new partition with the unallocated space
- Format 2nd partition and install XP on it
 
IGemini said:
Possible way without using any other software, assuming you're starting with a newly-formatted drive:

- Install Windows 7
- After install, go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management
- Shrink the partition by the amount of space you want for the second one, form a new partition with the unallocated space
- Format 2nd partition and install XP on it
Click to expand...

The above won't work without installing a 3rd party bootloader as Windows XP's bootloader will overwrite the bootloader that Windows 7 installs and will not be able to load Windows 7.

The procedure is to install Windows XP then shrink the partition using the disk management tool and then proceed to install Windows 7.
 
If the bootloader is a problem I'd suggest using EasyBCD to fix it. Free program, small footprint, pretty easy to use. Used it to fix my Vista/XP dual-boot I had at one time.

I believe shrinking the volume in XP isn't able to be done in disk management, that feature was added with Vista and later. With XP it requires doing it via command line.
 
Why don't you want to use a 3rd party partitioner? If you're doing this as an academic exercise I can appreciate that, but it isn't the easiest way.
 
lxskllr said:
Why don't you want to use a 3rd party partitioner? If you're doing this as an academic exercise I can appreciate that, but it isn't the easiest way.
Click to expand...

When I used partition magic back in the day on windows XP SP2 it caused some stability issues that took me months to figure out. Granted it was with a promise raid stripe setup, and SP2 was not compatible with parition magic. It worked fine when I used SP1 / SP1a. Therfore I am now sour over the parition tools. I ended up using windows to do the partition and it worked perfect from then on. Later the problem was addressed.

Also now for some reason XP will not work unless clusters are 4k. I used to use 16k x 16k to match the controller strip. Way off base here. Sorry....
 
This was just as simple as I first thought. I installed the blank HD into a system running winxp. I created a primary partition 50% of the total size, then formatted it. Then I made the other half a partition as well and formatted it.

Unplugged HS and installed into the final computer. Installed XP first on the 1st partition . Then win7 on the other partition, and sure enought the win7 bootloader asks which OS to use each boot. Perfect......
 
Sorry about resurecting a thread, but I'm in a similar situation:
I have Windows 7 already loaded and I want to add XP to my drive.

Can I just resize the partition with the Windows 7 partition manager and install XP then rerun the windows 7 disk to restore the boot sector to allow it to dual boot? Do I have to reinstall 7 to get the boot sector restored, or is there some recovery tool on the disk?

I don't mind using free 3rd party software if that's easier, but I don't want to buy any software to do this.

Thanks in advance.
 
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