either dual boot or 2 HD question

[Gee Wally]

Hi Guys,

I am thinking on either dual booting or 2 HD's. What I would like to know is if I put WIN 7 on one HD and keep XP on another HD what do I need to do with the boot.ini and on which OS does it need to be done to? If not with the boot.ini, is there an easier way I can show both OS's as the PC boots up so I can pick the one I want to boot into.

Please bare with me in doing this as I have never done this before.

thanks

 

[Tim]

I've got Vista and Win7 on seperate hard drives, when i boot, it asks me which one to boot, and then if i click notyhing it boots after a while on the highlighted one

Havent had to change any files or anything....

 

[King X13]

My advice, specially since you never did this before is...dont start with a beta which windows 7 is. They are highly unpredictable. Pratice dual boot setups with xp and 2000 or even xp and vista to get your feet wet. Betas are for people who like to dabble in troubleshooting since its full of errors. I dont know if its worth that headache for you.

 

[Tim]

Win7 is pretty solid, i have to say.
I did my first dual boot with it, no problems at all

 

[Gee Wally]

I've got Vista and Win7 on seperate hard drives, when i boot, it asks me which one to boot, and then if i click notyhing it boots after a while on the highlighted one

Havent had to change any files or anything....

So it is the same thing with 2 HD as it is with dual booting on 1 HD then. I have dual booted in the past and that is what shows up with both options upon boot up. That is good to know that it is done for me.

thanks.

 

[KSoD]

Windows 7 does not use the boot.ini that is ending with XP. Windows 7 uses the BCD which came along with Vista.

Just install Win7. It should auto detect the XP install and give you a entry for it. If not then we can fix it afterwards.

 

[Hampton]

Dual booting on one drive partitioned or 2 separate HD's makes no difference the only thing is you will want to set the order of the HD's in your Bios based on the drive you want to read first (this can be a boot problem if it is not configured the way you want in boot settings)

Once you have your drives configured then you have to decide which OS is your main Boot, and use the expendable OS for your second drive/partition (Win 7 Beta) that way if you have to re-install the beta you can do it on the same partition with out haveing to install both OS's again.

 

[Gee Wally]

Did not know that about boot.ini. That is good to know.

Thanks guys.

 

[carnageX]

Just install Win7. It should auto detect the XP install and give you a entry for it. If not then we can fix it afterwards.

That's what its done with mine as well.
HDD 0 = XP
HDD 1 = Win 7 (used to be Vista) / Ubuntu.

If I do a normal boot with my primary HDD 0 first on the list, it gives me a boot selection between XP and Win 7 (Win 7 automatically added this). If I choose to boot off of the other drive (HDD 1), I get the GRUB menu (but can't load 7 from it as I haven't fixed 7 tow ork with GRUB yet).