XP/Win7 Dual Boot

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

Ola Vato's,

I just got my xp cd, so I was going to attempt this dual boot. Only issue I'm having is with 3rd party SCSI drivers and do I need them during the xp set up? I'm in RAID 0 with dual raptors 10k, I've googled and been looking around, but I can't find anything to help me. I somehow remember this being important tho...anyone have any info on this?

[Bones]

Is there any reason why you are installing both XP and Win7? In my experience so far Win7 runs everything that we play here at =VG= just fine.

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

Because Win7/64 doesn't run all the games I play and I wanted to have an XP partition for games like that. Also with XP I can use XFire with these games and with Win7/64 it's not possible or fully functional.

[=VG= Solar]

Wouldn't hurt to have them handy. If you don't have them and install the worst that can happen is the XP partition wont boot and you can simply return to win7, download your drivers from manufacturers website, put them on a disc or usb pen and your cooking with gas!

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

No see, I need to wipe everything, install xp, then do a win7 partition or the boot sequence gets porked. There will be no going back to win7 after I install XP, so I need to have a life line ready and those drivers just in case. I'm in a holding pattern until then...doh

[PITN]

You will need a scsi boot disk if you want to use the raid. Try the raid controllers manufacturer or the motherboard manufacturer.

As for dual boot. Another option is a hot swap HDD bay. This way you can have one large XP drive with everything related to XP and XP installed programs on it. Keep your shit COMPLETELY seperate from win7 all together.

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

ok, PITN my man I think you're getting it. I have 2/300 GB drives.

I want one for xp and one for win7.

I was told I have to install xp first due to boot stuff but I cant find any SCSI drivers and I dont have a floppy drive to install them so can I use my Thumb drive?

Send me your phone number in case I get stuck man! gawd damn microsoft all of a sudden wants to charge me for support.

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

Yes you will need a floppy with the RAID drivers on the disk...when the XP install first starts press F6 to load SCSI drivers then follow the prompts. Not sure if you can load from a USB drive... never tried it and in XP it defaults to the A: drive. You could always buy a cheap floppy or USB floppy drive.

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

I've got the drivers burned to a disc and on my thumbdrive, but I dont have a floppy. It's 2011, there must be a way to do this without a floppy drive. I thot I cud just use one of my 2 DVD/RW drives, one for XP, the other for the SCSI drivers?

[PITN]

You nay be able to use the CD drive and maybe the pen drive.

XP is OLD. Use a seperate HDD and don't fuk with your Win7 install. Just in case you can't get it to work.

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

ok so how do I do that?

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

I bought another 500GB HD for the XP install. I don't have to mess with my RAID install. I still need some help figuring this out man, have you done this before?

The HD will be here on Wed.

[PITN]

I've installed XP with a RAID before. Not a dual boot.

Keeping them completely seperate is cleaner and should cause less grief.

[=VG= poffadder]

The separate HDD will make things a lot easier to install. You don't need to set up partitions and a dual boot.

When installing Xp onto your new HDD make sure that you have your raptors disconnected and your motherboards boot priority set to your new HDD. Once you got XP configured and running on that drive, shut down your pc and reconnect your raptors.. Start it up again and let the pc boot into XP. Once in make sure that you see all of your drives in My Computer and can access and use them (your pc should configure this for you as there will be conflicts between the two OS's as all the files will be visible to the pc but it should do this automatically as you log in) finally restart your pc and change your boot priority to the raptors and boot into Win 7 and make sure that you can see your new hdd and its contents(again it should configure this automatically)

There is a possibility that every time you want to start with the other OS, you will need to go into your BIOS to change your boot priority to the other drive.

But apparently Win 7 has an automatic boot manager that will prompt you at start up to choose your OS when it detects more than 1 OS on the system, even when they are on separate drives.

[=VG= Ingo]

wait wont this work
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

Windows XP Mode was primarily designed to help businesses move from Windows XP to Windows 7. It isn't optimized for graphic-intensive programs such as 3D games, nor is it well suited for programs with hardware requirements such as TV tuners.

[=VG= Solar]

I've never dual booted two windows operating systems only windows and linux or two linux operating systems.

It should be a simple case of fitting the new drive you ordered, inserting the XP disc and loading from the disc, it will detect all your hard drives, pick a drive, partition it (creating a single partition for everything should suffice) and hit next to have the installer format that drive, partition it like u wanted and install XP there. You might need a bootloader to be able to select which operating system/hard drive you want to boot from. Not sure if windows comes with one, I know linux installs use GRUB as default(GRand Unified Bootloader). Basically when I turn on my pc I get a list of different operating systems I want to use whether it be linux or windows.

[Archer7]

Just saw this post, I would say just install XP without all that Raid stuff on that HDD you bought. Now the after you install XP ur gona need a program called EasyBCD 2.0.2 which you will use to dual boot with XP and Win7.
Now i helped Marlin, Shafty and countless others to do that very simple. After using this EasyBCD you will have the option to boot from either 1 of the OS simple is that.

Good luck
Archer

[=VG= BLuDKLoT]

My plan was to install XP on the new drive I bought, but nothing ever goes that simple for me. I was thinking about hiring someone to come do it just in case. I always get issues with something like this not installing properly, so I'm sure I will run into some sort of issue. Thanks for the info.