Add existing XP from old hd to new hd, Dual boot Win 7, XP

M

MacksPower

Member
I want to backup my old XP os from my old hard drive then restore it to my new hard drive that has Win 7 installed. If I use DriveImage XML to restore Win Xp on a new partition on the new drive will I be able to boot my existing Win Xp, that was originally installed on this computer? I believe it will work but I'll have to set up the boot options with EasyBcd. Will that work?
 
I am using a laptop with one hdd slot. I bought a hybrid ssd hard drive which is alot faster than my old one and has lots of room. I also got Win 7 x64 but I am used to the Win XP set up on the old hdd and want to be able to keep using it plus I might need a 32 bit os sometimes. The drive letter of the Win Xp I want to clone is F. I had xp on C but it wouldn't boot so I installed it on F a long time ago. E and D are just data partitions. So if I want to install my old F drive could I partition this hard using Win 7 without a drive a letter being assigned? If not should I restore it to whichever partition Win 7 calls F? I am also wondering if Win Xp will see the Win 7 hidden partition and if that factors into which partition I should restore it to.
 
Drive letters are assigned at boot time. It is perfectly fine to have as many operating systems on the same drive all on C: (as they see it). I have Windows 7, XP, and Vista all on a 500 GB drive and they are in separate partitions, all on C:.

But with different hardware, your XP will not boot. It may be more convenient to convert it to a virtual machine and then run it inside Windows 7. That way, you could run both at the same time which is far more convenient than booting to get from one to the other.
 
It's on the same h/w, so no problem with that Abraxas.
Mack, it doesn't matter what W7 calls the partitions.
Partition letters are not "real". They're just registry entries in the running OS. The W7 map and the XP map are separate and unrelated. The problem is one of XP's registry containing information about the position of itself, linked to a particular letter (e.g C: )
Move it to a different relative position and it decides the old location has to be C: so it gives itself a new letter, and the resulting registry schizophrenia makes the OS unbootable.
The link I gave you previously advises on how to clone the OS without giving yourself this problem.
 
Terry60 said:
Check this link about XP cloning problems. Why don't you just put the old HDD in the PC and dual boot the original installation ?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. I did get it to work. I used DriveImage XML from within Win 7 to restore the os files, then I used regedit to clear MountedDevice in the registry and ran Easybcd 2.1 to add Win Xp to the boot options and it worked.
 
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