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XP win 7 dual boot

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Perryg114

Senior member
What would it take to make a dual boot system with XP pro and Win 7 Home Premium? I have a copy of Acronis Disk Director that can do the partitioning but how does one get a boot screen that asks which OS to boot to? 90% of the time I will use win 7 but there are some compatibility issues that I am encountering that I don't think I will be able to overcome easily. I assume you boot to a shell then select an OS and then you are ready to go?

Perry
 
I ran Vista x64/XP x32 for several years and now am running Win7 x64 /XP32 x32. Install XP first and size the partition you want for it at that time. Next install Win 7 and it will automatically set up the Windows boot manager for you. After both are installed, a screen will appear during the boot process that asks which OS you want to use. If you do not select XP, it will start Win7 by default after 30 seconds.

You can change the 30 seconds in "msconfig" under the "boot" tab. I have mine set at 5seconds.

The boot manager will show XP as " Previous Version of Windows" but you can change with this Admin Command: bcdedit /set {ntldr} description "Whatever you want to call it"
 
Perryg114 said:
What would it take to make a dual boot system with XP pro and Win 7 Home Premium? I have a copy of Acronis Disk Director that can do the partitioning but how does one get a boot screen that asks which OS to boot to? 90% of the time I will use win 7 but there are some compatibility issues that I am encountering that I don't think I will be able to overcome easily. I assume you boot to a shell then select an OS and then you are ready to go?

Perry
Click to expand...

I would install Win7 to C:\ and then install WinXP Pro to another partition. There are plenty of boot loader editing programs out there to get your Win7 boot loader fixed after installing WinXP Pro. Alternatively you could get VMWare Workstation or Virtual PC 2007 for the odd program that needs WinXP Pro, and just VM WinXP Pro whenever you need it without having to reboot.
 
...best to install XP first. If you install XP last, it will overwrite Win 7's boot manager with it's own and you will not be able to load Win 7. The Newer OS's boot manager *does* recognize and know how to boot XP, though.
 
I have found out that my current compatibility problems are caused by IE8 and not Win 7. I still may have need for this dual boot if I run into more problems. I am setting up Windows home server and I let it install IE8 and when I tried to install my security camera viewer software on it, the web interface would not work that downloads the viewer programs. When I installed them from the disk it worked fine on my Win 7 laptop. The Security system was originally designed to operate in XP and IE6.

Perry
 
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just my 2c - go back to the software supplier and ask for an updated version. the more you patch it and work around problems, the more expensive maintaining the system will be in the long run. seen a similar problem with Sony 25x ip cameras - and they are notoriously slow at updating legacy software. if possible, raise a ticket with the enterprise support helpdesk of your supplier, they tend to listen more carefully.
 
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