[Grav!ty]

I did not format mine while in Windows 7, I let XP do that during the install

I just got the "error loading operating system" message again after XP first reboot. I'll start again, let XP format the partition and see what happens. If that fails I'll try on my Intel Q6600 system and if that fails I'll go with IDE drive on the AMD system

Hey at least I'm becoming very familiar with the installation process

[yeshuas]

What, you mean you forgot what it was like to install XP .

Hmmmmm, I just thought of something; my XP is a XP Pro w/ SP3 slipstreamed

[Grav!ty]

What, you mean you forgot what it was like to install XP.

Hmmmmm, I just thought of something; my XP is a XP Pro w/ SP3 slipstreamed

So are mine, an OEM copy and one from each TechNet and MSDN. I've got another hour or so to play with this thing this morning and will log off now to install...again on my Intel main system

[yeshuas]

Good luck, and may the Force be with You

[Grav!ty]

Thanks Daniel, guys for your input. I've now got all the material (screenshots and steps to take), I need for the final guide and will update the top of the thread in a day or three

I found that as long as I only created unalloacted space for the XP partition in Windows 7 and created the partition and formatted it with XP setup, that all went well.

Also and this is not really part of the exercise but still interesting, if I did not use the Windows 7 "Advanced options" to create a partition and format it for Windows 7 install, then I only had that small weird 1 MB partition created at the end of the disk and was able to fully complete XP installation I think because there was no weird small 1 MB partition at the front of the drive. This may be due to the WD Raptors I'm using.

Oh yeah, it's totally necessary (at least for me) to allocate a drive letter to the small System partition that Windows 7 creates when installed on it's own on a system. Without doing that I variously got the "Error loading operating system" error message or "A disk read error occurred" error message

Now to get my main system back into the condition it was before I started with this...*sigh*

[shreader]

I am looking forward to your guide & trying it out myself on a (80GB swap-out) extra hdd I have boxed up.

[Grav!ty]

I am looking forward to your guide & trying it out myself on a (80GB swap-out) extra hdd I have boxed up.

Thanks JD, it would be really great to know how the public Beta behaves I've updated the top of the thread to the point of installing Windows XP, but not completed the guide yet. I'm finding some discrepancies in what Daniel did to get the dual boot working (Daniel followed the steps in this guide), and what I needed to do to get it working.

I had to place the XP boot system files on both the System drive and the Windows XP installation drive, in addition to going through the VistaBootPRO steps, and I had to create a legacy entry for Windows XP.

If you can confirm that Daniel's method works for you, I'll go with that

[shreader]

I took a shot at trying a Windows 7 then XP Pro install on a clean 200GB EDIE hdd last night.
From 7 I shrank the (C) volume & created 50GB of Unallocated space, then booted with the XP CD.
Created & formatted (not quick) the new partition & XP started loading files then restarted & I got this Error message.



Ctr+Alt+Delete & either got just a black screen & blinking cursor or that error message,
Tried 2-3 more times w/ the Ctr+Alt+Delete to wish for luck...

So I tried another XP install quick formatting (2x) & overwrite existing (1x) still got stuck at the error message or the blinking cursor.

I could not get back into 7 either, so I switched back the original EIDE hdd w/ 3+ OSs installed & it worked fine

One strange thing that happened was that I found that the Windows 7 install or somehow, my BIOS was changed at the RAID Controller to being Enabled from being Disabled & 7 started asking for drivers.

[kd1966]

Ya'll know this does NOT bode well going forward............. I can just see the curiosity stemming from a new Windows 7 customer........ who has an old XP system with install disks (Probably SP1 or worse) and thinks, ..... what the heck???

[Grav!ty]

Thanks a lot for the feedback and your numerous attempts to get that working JD

Yeah Kevin, this really doesn't bode well for dual booting Windows 7 pre-installed and Windows XP. Seems like a LOT of work to get that going but that's why I figured this guide is probably the most important to work on. I'm going to mess with a few more hardware configurations (got a system in for repairs that I'll fit one of my drives to and test this again.

I'll complete the guide at the top of the thread with what has worked for Daniel and I so far, but I think it's going to be a "dynamic" guide which will need some fine tuning as we gather more knowledge on what's up with the Windows 7 partition setup, especially those weird 1 MB unallocated spaces. I still haven't gotten to terms with that!