Gaming Duel boot win 7 and xp

[kiel379]

Hey I have a spare sata hard drive and want to install xp on it to duel boot with win 7 64 bit, looked on internets and it's looks ok to do but a bit long winded, anyone know of any easy ways or shortcuts for something like this?

 

[Jamstruth]

Shortcut: Format drive, install XP first then Win7.

Problem is that when you try to installXP it can't see Windows 7 as a Windows OS or see its boot manager (as Vista+ use a different boot menu) so its not sure what to do and will likely render Win7 unbootable. This is why you have to go into EasyBCD after installing XP to fix your MBR and BCD records. This guide explains how do it pretty simply http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

Any particular reason you want WinXP on your computer?

 

[FAST6191]

+1 to easyBCD. Solved several hassles that program has although I will mention if you want with your setup you could probably use force a boot from the BIOS menu if you preferred.

Back on topic I should mention 7 has half decent backwards compatibility but you might also consider https://www.virtualbox.org/ - it allows you to run a complete machine from 7 and it is quite easy to pipe USB and other ports to it http://gbatemp.net/topic/275407-using-virtualbox-to-manage-legacy-gba-flashcarts/ being the one around here for old GBA carts as a nice demonstration (if old flash carts can be made to work then just about everything will).

 

[kiel379]

Yea theirs a programme called pyramix that I need to install but windows 7 won't run it, it try's to install a .net thing and comes up with a error, pyramix was designed for 32bit xp systems so I thought that might be the reason, unless you can suggest a way I could install it on win 7? That would be great.

I looked at the link before as well, it does explain it all fairly well but I was just wondering if their was a easer way, like removing the win7 hard drive then putting blank hard drive in and installing xp, putting both hard drives in and see if tht works maybe.

 

[Fishaman P]

Try installing the .NET framework, and see if that helps.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851&WT.mc_id=MSCOM_EN_US_DLC_DETAILS_121LSUS007996

 

[Jamstruth]

Yea theirs a programme called pyramix that I need to install but windows 7 won't run it, it try's to install a .net thing and comes up with a error, pyramix was designed for 32bit xp systems so I thought that might be the reason, unless you can suggest a way I could install it on win 7? That would be great.

I looked at the link before as well, it does explain it all fairly well but I was just wondering if their was a easer way, like removing the win7 hard drive then putting blank hard drive in and installing xp, putting both hard drives in and see if tht works maybe.

Your computer would default to the Master drive for boot in that situation, i think. If there's 2 drives with different MBRs it will go with whatever's on the master drive (which would likely be 7 for you)

 

[Magsor]

like removing the win7 hard drive then putting blank hard drive in and installing xp, putting both hard drives in and see if tht works maybe.

This is what you need to do.
you don't need to touch your win7
just reinstall win7 on a VHD afterwards it will fix the bootloader.

 

[ivobhz]

If you have Win 7 Professional or Ultimate you can also try XP Mode.