[RESOLVED] Dual boot with XP and Windows 7

[Raydee]

Right now I have two hard drives in my PC, one is a 80gb that runs XP Pro and the other is a 500gb that is partitioned into 5 separate drives. I want to order 7 Pro and wonder if it will be possible to put it on one of the partitions in the 500gb HDD without formatting the whole drive?

[Steve R Jones]

As long as the partition is empty and is a Primary Partition it should work fine...You can only only hacew 4 primary partitions...So your 5th one is maybe an extended....

[SuperSparks]

Actually it isn't a problem to install on an extended partition, I've done it myself in the past. When Win 7 is installed Setup will take care of the dual-boot options, you don't need to do anything special. It's a good idea to label the volume that you want to install onto first though, because the different partitions can be confusing in Setup when you have a few.

[Raydee]

Steve you are right, my drive does have 4 partitions with one 100gb partition that doesn't have a single file on it. I plan to use that partition for windows 7.

[Raydee]

Ok well I bought my Windows 7 home premium Upgrade yesterday and shut off my PC, booted from the 64bit DVD and setup started but once the windows screen appears there is a white pointer on the screen and nothing happens. I also tried this with the 32bit version with the exact same results. If i put the 32bit version in the CD rom it will try to updrade my XP but I really want to keep my XP and install the 64bit Windows 7 on one of my empty partitions.

[SuperSparks]

Are you saying that Setup does nor run at all? Do you gt the screen here it asks what language you want to use?

[Raydee]

Nope it never made it to that screen. It loads the files, says its starting Windows and then just hangs on the blue start screen. I ended up just booting to XP and using the 32bit disc and installed it on the empty partition so I could still dual boot. I really wanted to do the 64 bit version but its not that big of a deal.

[SuperSparks]

Silly question, but is it definitely a 64-bit CPU? Because it sounds as if Setup doesn't like something about your hardware.

[Raydee]

It wouldn't boot from either the 32bit or 64bit DVD's. I am running a E8200 processor.

[SuperSparks]

Well that's most definitely 64-bit.

I seem to recall that I had a similar problem with one of the Vista betas. I fixed things by updating he BIOS, so you might want to check if there is a newer version available.