Dual Booting

[Krakerman]

Has anyone tried this or have done this at all?

I been wanting to have XP installed alongside Win 7 but seems like my new computer won't even boot the WinXP Home Install CD (Legal I bought at Frys years ago) it freezes at the loading windows when you try to install. I read that you need to somehow slimstream drivers for it to work but not sure to even start with that. Thought I might put it out there if anyone has any experience doing this at all.

Thanks

[Draco1962]

I have not done it myself, but you might want to give this tutorial a look.

[Tom Speirs]

Ive done it several times. You basically include the AHCI drivers using nlite then it should boot. You can't easily dual boot though unless XP is installed and then win 7 is installed. So its best to wipe, install XP then install win 7.

[Draco1962]

Depending on what you are wanting to do on the XP side of things, there is also the option to download and install XP Mode which, in essence, integrates an XP VM somewhat seamlessly with your Win 7 side. The caveat is that it is compatible with Win 7 Pro, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions. I have tested it with a few less intensive games with some pretty decent results where simply selecting them to run in XP Compatibility mode was not sufficient.

[Tom Speirs]

VMWare workstation also has 3d acceleration for XP. Although I would not recommend a virtual machine for games unless you are using something like xen and passing through the graphics adapter. It does not really cut it otherwise IMHO. In my case for testing GameEx not all display features are supported so I dual booted.

[Krakerman]

What if I have win 7 on say drive C: and I want to install XP on Drive E: using EasyBCD will that work. My problem is when I insert my win xp CD it will just lock up when it loads the drivers and then goes to startup windows.

So I have Win 7x64 on one HD which is Drive C: and I have a blank HD which is Drive E: where do I go from here?