Dual Boot Pure Win7 Pro & Pure Xp Pro - Just A Little More

[BeeJ]

New thread because the other is getting old and worn. lol
But I want to redirect to a new nuance.

I decided to do the two isolated disk method: XP Pro on one disk (the
other disk not connected), then Win7 Pro on the second HD Drive (XP
disk not connected).

I then connected both HD and booted. It went straight to the Win7 Pro
HD.
Although probably not important, the Win7 is sata3, XP Pro sata1 and
the DVD sata2.

So there was no startup whatever asking which HD to boot from.

So I went into the BIOS and in the section "BOOT" I saw that only the
Win7 HD and the DVD were available to select from, the XP Pro HD was
not in the list. So I went to the drive section of the BIOS and found
that the Win7 Pro, XP Pro HD were both there (and the DVD).

So I nosed around the BIOS and found another selector that allowed me
to choose out of the HD drives (sorry not at that PC right now so I
cannot offer the BIOS parameter I set) and then went back to the BOOT
section and I was able to choose the XP HD or DVD but not the Win7 HD
(Win7 HD was now not in the list).

I do have the latest BIOS, just flashed it before all of this above.

(1) So, perhaps I am looking for some other terminology in the BIOS
or
(2) is there some other way to get a DUAL boot with this hardware / OS
configuration that is easier than multiple steps in the BIOS?

This is a MSI motherboard A75MA-G55 (MS-7696). And once in a while when
booting I see Winki (sorry I amy not be remembering that name
correctly). Not sure what this is all about. May be part of the UEFI
(but not sure what that is all about). More discussion on these two
too please.

P.S. when I started each OS, Windows (the one starting) discovered the
other HD and "installed" it. So I can see the other OS HD from the
booted OS HD. Nice feature for sure.

P.P.S. When I installed XP Pro it asked if I wanted to partition so I
did. I split the 500G into two.
BUT when I installed Win7 it just ate the whole HD and gave me no hint
of allowing a partition arrangement so I just went along for the ride
and now have only one partition on that OS HD.

so...
(3) does Win7 Pro have an facility within itself to create a partition
on its own HD?
(4) if not, then what is the best (free would be nice) partition app
(one that I can easily figure out).

 

[Paul]

New thread because the other is getting old and worn. lol
But I want to redirect to a new nuance.

I decided to do the two isolated disk method: XP Pro on one disk (the
other disk not connected), then Win7 Pro on the second HD Drive (XP disk
not connected).

I then connected both HD and booted. It went straight to the Win7 Pro HD.
Although probably not important, the Win7 is sata3, XP Pro sata1 and the
DVD sata2.

So there was no startup whatever asking which HD to boot from.

So I went into the BIOS and in the section "BOOT" I saw that only the
Win7 HD and the DVD were available to select from, the XP Pro HD was not
in the list. So I went to the drive section of the BIOS and found that
the Win7 Pro, XP Pro HD were both there (and the DVD).

So I nosed around the BIOS and found another selector that allowed me to
choose out of the HD drives (sorry not at that PC right now so I cannot
offer the BIOS parameter I set) and then went back to the BOOT section
and I was able to choose the XP HD or DVD but not the Win7 HD (Win7 HD
was now not in the list).

I do have the latest BIOS, just flashed it before all of this above.

(1) So, perhaps I am looking for some other terminology in the BIOS
or
(2) is there some other way to get a DUAL boot with this hardware / OS
configuration that is easier than multiple steps in the BIOS?

This is a MSI motherboard A75MA-G55 (MS-7696). And once in a while when
booting I see Winki (sorry I amy not be remembering that name
correctly). Not sure what this is all about. May be part of the UEFI
(but not sure what that is all about). More discussion on these two too
please.

P.S. when I started each OS, Windows (the one starting) discovered the
other HD and "installed" it. So I can see the other OS HD from the
booted OS HD. Nice feature for sure.

P.P.S. When I installed XP Pro it asked if I wanted to partition so I
did. I split the 500G into two.
BUT when I installed Win7 it just ate the whole HD and gave me no hint
of allowing a partition arrangement so I just went along for the ride
and now have only one partition on that OS HD.

so...
(3) does Win7 Pro have an facility within itself to create a partition
on its own HD?
(4) if not, then what is the best (free would be nice) partition app
(one that I can easily figure out).

There are two ways to do this:

1) Locate the BIOS popup boot function key and use it. On my Asus
motherboard, you press F8 during the initial POST screen.
(Turn off "full screen logo", so you can see the text underneath.)
On my Asrock motherboard, you press F11 during the initial POST screen.
The BIOS will present a menu of disk drives, and you can make a
temporary boot choice. In that way, you can select the Win7 disk
to boot, or the WinXP disk to boot, without making a permanent
choice.

2) The second way, doesn't use the BIOS BBS popup. Instead, you go into
the BIOS and select the Win7 disk to be first in the disk list.
Now the Win7 disk will be the one that boots all the time, without
any function keys. You will be using the Win7 boot manager, to make
the boot selection.

Now, when Win7 is booted, use EasyBCD to add WinXP to the Win7 boot
menu. After you do that, and reboot, now there should be two entries
in the Win7 boot screen. You can then select Win7 or WinXP from that
menu.

Instead of the third party EasyBCD, you can also use bcdedit, which is a
Microsoft command line utility. But this is a bit more complicated.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721886(WS.10).aspx#BKMK_bcdedit

HTH,
Paul

 

[BeeJ]

Does (2) work if the OSs are on different HDs and do not know about
each other?

 

[BeeJ]

OOPS the above was a reply to Paul.

Alias - thanks will give that a try F11.
Now that you mention it, I seem to remember that from something I read
but did forget until you remined me. Thanks!!!

 

[BeeJ]

Does (2) work if the OSs are on different HDs and do not know about
each other?

 

[Paul]

Does (2) work if the OSs are on different HDs and do not know about each
other?

As far as I know, yes.

The reason it can work, is the ARC path describing the second OS,
has the ability to select a different disk. So Win7 on disk1 can
select WinXP on disk0 as the thing to boot. As far as I know, the
BCD would have the same or better addressing capabilities, to
the previous boot.ini. It should not be limited to selecting
things on the same disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102873

An alternate method of addressing partitions, is via a GUID.
In a GUID environment (even Linux can do that), each partition
is assigned a GUID value. When the system boots, the GUID
values are examined. If the boot menu has a particular
GUID listed in it, and you select it, the boot loader knows
which GUID is associated with which disk and partition. The
advantage of GUID addressing, is you can move the disks around
to different ports, or even different interface types on
the computer (move SATA to IDE with an adapter), and the
boot loader can still find it. With the ARC path method of
addressing, sometimes trivial things (side effect of using a
partition editor) can cause a non-booting system. And then the
path has to be fixed up. In the case of boot.ini based OSes (WinXP),
fixing an issue like that is trivial. A text editor can be used.
With Win7, it's going to be a bit more difficult, because boot.ini
is no longer used.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731245(WS.10).aspx

So, yes, no problem. Lots of capability.

Paul