Dual booting XP Pro & Windows 7... how to?

[Rabbitrunner51]

Something i'm seriously thinking about is when I get my replacement drive I RMA'ed a couple weeks ago, I was thinking about having Windows 7 on that drive and keeping this drive ,which has XP Pro on it.

I googled about and found most of the many links and sites about this,although mostly they all mention installing Windows 7 first then XP. I want to do it the other way around and using two seperate HD's.

Can someone hook me up to any links or tell me just how to do this. I really do not want to lose or have to re-install this current OS ( XP ). Thks bunches...

[Steve R Jones]

First way-> hook both drives up - install Win7. Boom all done. Just don't unhook the XP drive.

Second Way - unhook the XP drive - install win7. Boom all done. You'd have to go into the BIOS each time and tell the system which drive to boot from.

If you have Win7 Pro or Ultimate using the free XP virtual pc would be the way to go.

[Rabbitrunner51]

Thks Steve... That perfectly decribes what I'm after. Losing or re-installing XP is not the end of the world, its just I have everything running top notch with a whole load of stuff working perfectly... LOL

[Rabbitrunner51]

Big problem still. I tired to reboot using the 'boot from CD' prompt and it just comes up the BFCD prompt ,then it immediately bypasses reading the disk and goes into my XP OS.

I even tried opening it with 7-zip which worked. All the files are there, but of course the thing is in the UCF file format and I get cannot open >>not a win32 op.system file etc..

Went online and read over a copule of excellent sites and all info and here is the deal;

Both the formated disk and not formated solution were about the same info on how to. Nothing unordinary ... reboot computer, boot from CD etc..

Both my drives are now in the NTFS file system. I'm thinking,would it boot on my other drive ( mostly all empty ) if i wiped the NTFS file system ? and possibly unhooked the XP drive?

What am i missing here?? Checked the MS site info and along the way it stated custom installation info, and the prefered clean install, which means no file system intact... ala my first thought.

[dkm]

I have two HDD's, one 200gb with a 75gb primary partition, and a 125gb backup, and a second 100gb with my Acronis TI images, one XP, and one Win7.
I don't use the XP often, only for some mapping software. I just restore the image when required, update the programs and do what I have to, re-do the image, and restore the Win7 when done. A little more time consuming, but seems to work fine for me.