Posted: 1/20/2010 10:53:28 AM EDT
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It's been a long time since I set up a dual boot system...
I currently have 3 HDDs in my PC. a 1TB with Windows 7 64 as the primary SATA a 500GB with un unmolested copy of Win XP 32 as SATA drive number 2 and a 500GB for my music as SATA drive number 3 My sound card lost it's recording functionality when I went to WIN 7, and this is important to me. Is there a way I can choose to boot from the Win XP drive instead of the 7 drive? FYI, the 500Gb Win XP drive WAS my primary until I got Win 7 and the 1TB drive. I then threw the 500GB XP drive in as extra storage, so the XP OS on it is completely untouched as of right now. Can it be done or do I have to erase and repartition the 1TB? |
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Have you looked into installing a virtual partition? http://www.virtualbox.org/ You can install an OS in a virtual disk partition. Is your sound hardware just old, or is it a driver issue? W7 drivers should catch up. I guess you could have 2 drives with separate OSs on them, and boot to them. I had a family member that used to do the same thing, until i got him convinced to run a Virtual Machine. |
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Quoted:
It's been a long time since I set up a dual boot system... I currently have 3 HDDs in my PC. a 1TB with Windows 7 64 as the primary SATA a 500GB with un unmolested copy of Win XP 32 as SATA drive number 2 and a 500GB for my music as SATA drive number 3 My sound card lost it's recording functionality when I went to WIN 7, and this is important to me. Is there a way I can choose to boot from the Win XP drive instead of the 7 drive? FYI, the 500Gb Win XP drive WAS my primary until I got Win 7 and the 1TB drive. I then threw the 500GB XP drive in as extra storage, so the XP OS on it is completely untouched as of right now. Can it be done or do I have to erase and repartition the 1TB? Ok, So the WinXP Drive was not formatted when you put it in for extra storage, as in your Untouched OS is on partition 1 on the drive, and the extra space is partition 2? If you have more than one OS on the drive array, then it should prompt you to ask which OS you want to run. If it doesn't, you might have to go into the BIOS and set the XP drive as the main boot drive. ETA: Skygod's method with virtual drives is a great alternative to the two OS's on seperate drives. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
It's been a long time since I set up a dual boot system... I currently have 3 HDDs in my PC. a 1TB with Windows 7 64 as the primary SATA a 500GB with un unmolested copy of Win XP 32 as SATA drive number 2 and a 500GB for my music as SATA drive number 3 My sound card lost it's recording functionality when I went to WIN 7, and this is important to me. Is there a way I can choose to boot from the Win XP drive instead of the 7 drive? FYI, the 500Gb Win XP drive WAS my primary until I got Win 7 and the 1TB drive. I then threw the 500GB XP drive in as extra storage, so the XP OS on it is completely untouched as of right now. Can it be done or do I have to erase and repartition the 1TB? Ok, So the WinXP Drive was not formatted when you put it in for extra storage, as in your Untouched OS is on partition 1 on the drive, and the extra space is partition 2? If you have more than one OS on the drive array, then it should prompt you to ask which OS you want to run. If it doesn't, you might have to go into the BIOS and set the XP drive as the main boot drive. ETA: Skygod's method with virtual drives is a great alternative to the two OS's on seperate drives. One drive has 7, the other has XP. I also thought that when I put the XP drive back in it would ask which drive I wanted to boot, but it just automatically goes for the Win 7 drive without prompting. |
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Just did a quick experiment.....
When my PC boots at the bottom it say's "press DEL for BIOS, ESC for BOOT" I pressed ESC and got into boot. It let me choose the XP drive and it loaded up XP fine (even had my old desktop still), BUT my mouse and keyboard wouldn't work. I reset and it automatically came back to 7 and here I am. Any idea how to fix the unresponsive mouse and KB with that boot method? |
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Quoted:
Just did a quick experiment..... When my PC boots at the bottom it say's "press DEL for BIOS, ESC for BOOT" I pressed ESC and got into boot. It let me choose the XP drive and it loaded up XP fine (even had my old desktop still), BUT my mouse and keyboard wouldn't work. I reset and it automatically came back to 7 and here I am. Any idea how to fix the unresponsive mouse and KB with that boot method? Are they USB? If so let it sit for a few minutes while the OS detects and load the drivers for them. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Just did a quick experiment..... When my PC boots at the bottom it say's "press DEL for BIOS, ESC for BOOT" I pressed ESC and got into boot. It let me choose the XP drive and it loaded up XP fine (even had my old desktop still), BUT my mouse and keyboard wouldn't work. I reset and it automatically came back to 7 and here I am. Any idea how to fix the unresponsive mouse and KB with that boot method? Are they USB? If so let it sit for a few minutes while the OS detects and load the drivers for them. That was my thought, also. However, only the mouse is USB. The kb is old school. I waited about 4 minutes and neither were gonna go. Also, FWIW, neither of them will wake my PC from sleep mode..... may be related.... |
| Sounds like you have enough resources. I would run MS Virtual PC and load up your copy of XP. I have virtual PC and run WIN 7 as my base, I can pull up xp and my network sees it as two separate computers. It keeps me from having to wait for the comp to boot to run programs I need that don't work on win 7 |
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every time i've had to install a new hard drive from scratch, i've always had to re-download drivers. usually its the NIC card or audio drivers that have problems transfering over. i had a HD crash with win XP and i bought a new one and installed Vista and had the same problem with the driver compatibility. plus, ur going from a 32-bit to 64-bit OS. i havent seen many problems with it but it may be problem. check out the drivers.
if u want to chose just one drive to boot from, go to the "boot" text file and delete the name/location of the other 2 drives and the computer will boot from the one you left remaining automatically. you will still be able to access the other 2 via my computer. |