awdrifter

I'm going to buy another HDD to install Win7 on, and I currently have XP installed on the WD640GB Sata HDD. I would like to keep this as one of the boot options. I've searched for the guides, but most guides deals with installing both OS on a single drive, and I would need to install XP again. I would like to keep this XP installation if possible. Thanks.

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gazza30

can't you just install new os on the new drive and when booting up hit F1 for boot options and select which drive(OS) you want to go with.

AMOCO

yes you can use 2 different hdd's & no you don't have to reinstall xp.

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TwoCables

Having the Windows dual-boot menu would be so much less of a hassle. I doubt this motherboard has a quick boot menu. Mine does, so I don't need a dual-boot menu (even though it would still be much less of a hassle).
I recently installed Windows 7 on my friend's system that had a separate hard drive in it with XP on it. I left the hard drive totally plugged in, but Windows 7 didn't make a dual-boot menu. Regardless of which drive we select, whether it's the XP drive or Win7 drive, there's no boot menu. So he has to press Del to get in the BIOS, then navigate to the Advanced BIOS Features, then he has to go into the boot order area, then he has to use Page Up or Page Down to change the boot order of the drives, then he has to press F10, then hit Enter and then wait. What a hassle.

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Ladiesman101

na dawg
dont make it more complicated then it is

just keep your XP Drive. get a 2nd drive and install W7 on the new drive,
its as easy as that

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TwoCables

That is exactly what he is trying to do, and his question is: will Windows 7 set up a dual-boot menu?

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Ladiesman101

oooppss
XD
looks like I kinda missed the point then ^^
well, i personally dont think there is a problem doing so, since all the other windows versions were fine to do so(if i remember correctly)

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TwoCables

Yeah, but we need somebody who has actually done this. I have. But unfortunately, Windows 7 did not set up a dual-boot menu on that computer. I expected it to, but yet it didn't.

But yet when I installed the official Release Candidate of Windows 7 on my system (as opposed to my friend's system that I'm talking about above), it set up a dual-boot menu on my XP hard drive. Unfortunately, the dual-boot menu doesn't allow me to use it to boot in to the official RC of 7, so I just use it to select "Previous version of Windows", which is XP. However, I'm not surprised that it's broken like that since dual-booting was said to be unsupported in the official RC of 7.

Thanks to that experience, I installed the retail version of 7 on my system with the XP hard drive unplugged, so I don't know if this can depend on the system or not.

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awdrifter

That's my concern exactly. If I just installed Win7 on the new drive, how do I enable the dual boot menu? Thanks for the info so far, but if anyone has done it or knows how to do it, please help.

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TwoCables

It's possible that you may be able to use the Windows installer to make a new partition with the unused space on the XP drive so that you can install Windows 7 on there in order to be assured that it will create a boot menu. Of course, you'd boot from the installation DVD, and then choose the "Custom (advanced)" installation, and then choose "Drive Options (advanced)" to get to the place where this is done.

I mean, you'd do this if there's no way a dual-boot menu would be created by installing Windows 7 on a separate hard drive with the XP hard drive still plugged in during the installation.

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