How to Dual Boot- Two Hard Drives

W

wallyh

Member
I would like to have the option of booting to either Win7 or Xp on startup. What I have done so far is is remove the Xp drive and install Win7 on a second drive. After reinstalling the Xp drive I can only boot to the Win7 drive.
Since I have hardly any programs installed on the Win7 drive (I do have Easy BCD 2.0 installed) should I uninstall Win7 and then reinstall Win7? Would this then see the Xp drive and add it to the boot menu? Or is there another way to do this?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Wally
 
Just add an XP entry to the W7 BCD with EasyBCD and let Easy2 auto-configure when it offers.
 
Thank you for your quick reply, I don't seem to be able to follow your directions though.Do I use Add/remove Entities to "add Xp entry to the Win7 BCD"? I can't seem to get to Drive F:\ where the Xp OS is.
Wally
 
In 2.0, if you're using the latest build (if not, get it), there is no "add/remove". It's now "add new entry"
and the reason you can't specify the XP drive is because that's WRONG.
The BCD doesn't point to XP, it points to the copied XP boot files and they point to XP.
Just select XP from the dropdown, accept that you need no more information, and allow EasyBCD to auto-configure. It will copy all the necessary files to W7 and create a correct copy of NTLDR's boot.ini, which will locate XP.
Your XP drive will be unaltered, and can still be booted independently with a BIOS override.
If you're new to dual-booting XP with Vista/7, be aware of the restore-point corruption which occurs, and use this MS hack to prevent it
 
Thanks again - I have 1.7.2, when I check for updates I get the message "you have the latest version". I tried the web site but all that's offered is 1.7.2.
Wally
 
You said in your OP that you were using 2.0, otherwise I would have given you the link (see CG's post)
 
Back
Top