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General discussion

Dual Boot Windows 7 and XP on separate hard drives

Oct 21, 2010 12:44PM PDT

Hey.

I recently put together a computer for some friends. Installed Windows 7 on the new hard drive (sata). Took the old hard drive (IDE) which was running XP (which has important programs and documents) and tried running it as a 'slave' thinking that they could still use the programs on there. Wrong! They have access to all their documents and programs, just none of the programs will work. So I did a bit of reading about dual boots, hoping to set it up so they could boot the old hard drive (with XP) when they needed to have access to their work programs and others like itunes and outlook express, and boot windows 7 for all new applications.

All the forums I've read are related to loading fresh copies onto hard drives, but I need to run their old hard drive 'as is'. What do I do? If I can't set up a dual boot, is there a way to 'copy' their old hard drive onto the new one?

Any help would be awesome!!! Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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You're right. That ain't supported.
Oct 21, 2010 2:49PM PDT

You can google the following to get XP running but 7 is going bye-bye.

"Change motherboard and save XP operating system."

After you get done with that, you can boot the Windows 7 DVD and install that on the second HDD. But be warned. When the day arrives they want to go to 7, there is no method to remove XP and keep the installed 7 running!

Bob

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Using your XP drive
Oct 21, 2010 4:27PM PDT

You could boot to XP or W7 by choosing the boot drive from bios. Set the drive you want to boot as first boot device in bios.
If you're not changing too often then this may suit you.