dual booting win XP/7

[Lior .B.]

so I finally switched to Win7.
I have XP on drive c, 7 on drive D.
default is Win 7 in the boot menu.

I would like to format drive C and install XP as a backup on it (so I will still have fresh XP and not the current one which is very slowly). Can I do it with the original XP installation CD as a normal installation or will if mess up to boot screen/order/startup?

 

[Mr. B]

You shouldn't have any trouble installing it on a separate partition. I would get both operating systems installed and booting properly before putting any effort into installing programs and such though, just to be sure.

On another note... I dual-booted 7 and XP after buying the latest OS, thinking I would have cause to run XP on occasion... I never did. The only program that I have trouble with on Win7 is the newsroom workflow software we use at work, so that's not a home PC issue.

 

[farmkid]

So, are you using a boot loader like Grub or something? If so, then installing XP will indeed over-write your MBR and you'll be left with just XP. If, however, your boot order is being controlled by the BIOS, then you should be okay. If you're using a boot loader, and it's on the drive with Win7, you might be able to just unhook that drive, install XP on the other, and then hook up the Win7 drive again.

 

[Scout101]

Yeah, no real reason to run the dual boot, Win 7 has handled everything I've thrown at it...

 

[Marc]

Yeah, no real reason to run the dual boot, Win 7 has handled everything I've thrown at it...

And depending on your version of Win7 you could find that XP virtualisation is built in - just have to download the virtualPC image from Microsoft (it's about a 1GB)