dual-booting

if i add a 2ed hd is there a way to dual boot win 7 .if i clone 1st d rto the .2ed ' i did this in xp by edditing the boot inf file. . but can.t seme to find it in win 7, 64 bit.thanks for any info on this. xbill

How large is your HDD? I have a 500gig HDD which I partitioned into roughly 2 equal sized partitions.
The 2nd half was left unallocated.

When I loaded win 7 I told it to install (useing custom install option) into the unallocated partition and away it went. For me the install went very smoothly.

Now when I boot I get the option (for about 20secs) to either load windows 7 or 'earlier version of windows' (it's words not mine) but in other words your other O/S in this case XP

I think he is saying he wants it on a second physical drive, not another partition on a single drive like yours.

If XP is already installed it appears you can use THIS method to add W7 to a new drive

Sorry, Well anyway under Windows Seven articles/User submitted articles Edawood subitted something about a dual boot set-up. Or is that the same asyour link?

I linked to Brink's tutorial

i have a 750 g , hd if i make a partition of 200 g can u put a copy of the win 7 on the sec.partition. i casper4 a cloning software.would like to keep 1 up to date use the other for every day use.

I'm not familier with the cloning program but you can use the free partition tool called 'minitool partition wizard home'. It's the one I used and it's pretty safe. A klutz like me can use it. You can use it to shrink your drive partition down and leave yourself some unallocated space . Win 7 will work ok on 200gig, I have it in a 220gig partition.

If your installing 7 from a dvd make sure you have that device set up as first boot device in your bios. Re-boot and then select custom install for win7, it should show you the partitions on your destination HDD (be sure to leave any other HDD unplugged during install) Highlight the partition you want to install into (the unallocated bit) and you should be good to go.

I got 7 installed first time without any stress doing it that way and now can dual boot into either of the O/S's

Win7 also comes with partition software that would be suitable for basic partition functions. Control Panel \ Administrative Tools \ Computer Management \ Disk Management. Make sure any 3rd party partition software is Win7 compatible or it can destroy the W7 boot manager.

Regardless of how many Operating Systems one has in their PC, I would advise to only install an OS to the Active Partition. This will keep the boot files needed for this OS on the same partition as the OS. Therefor cloning the partition will include the files needed to boot the OS, once the restored partition is marked active.

After all Operating Systems have been installed, EasyBCD can be used from Windows XP, Vista, or Win7 to modify the multi-boot menu at startup.

thanks for the info. i will try this later.