Re-installing multiple OSes

[yourbeliefs]

My nearly 4-year old Alienware is in desperate need of a cleaning out. Currently it has 2 HDDs, with Windows XP and Windows 7 Beta both on the main drive on separate partitions. The first partition has XP on it, and the second partition has had XP 64-bit, Vista Ultimate, and now Windows 7 on it at various times. As it's set up now, the XP partition is much larger than the second one, which was done intentionally at the time because I planned on using XP primarily. I want to change it around so that the XP partition will be smaller, as I plan on mainly using Windows 7 64-bit for most of my work. FYI, I realize that Windows 7 has an "XP mode" where you can run a virtual PC based version of the OS, but I still want a dedicated XP install available to me just in case, as there may still be some regular XP stuff that I will need to run which I don't want to leave to chance with the XP mode.

My question is how I should do my plan of attack. As I said I want to have 2 partitions on the same drive, but I'm not sure what to do with the partitions, which OS to install first, etc. The way I see it, I have a few options:

another FYI: I Have a copy of Partition Magic 8 installed:

• Delete the old Windows 7 partition and reduce the size of the XP partition, then install XP on the smaller first partition then install Windows 7 on the second partition (assuming that 7 can recognize the unpartitioned space in the setup)
• Delete the old Windows 7 partition, expand the current XP partition to the entire drive, then format and reinstall XP over it and then let Windows 7 setup create a new partition (again, assuming it can do this. I honestly don't know if it can, maybe someone can speak to it..)
• Keep the existing partitions, but swap the OSes, meaning I install 7 on the bigger one and XP on the smaller one. I'm just worried that I may mess up the MBR if I do that.

I'm probably making this sound more complicated than it really is, but I've only had so much experience with multi-system boots and juggling partitions around. What do you think is the best way to approach this?

 

[Ramy]

If you are wanting to wipe the drive, just delete the partitions and re-create them with Windows own partition maker.

 

[Ilya]

As I understand, Partition Magic 8 works fine with XP, but I have no idea if it will work fine with Win7 or if Win7 will be ok with you repartioning it's disk. So, my suggestion would be this:

1. Delete the Win7 Beta partition (you probably will want to do it anyway before installing the RTM)
2. Resize the XP partition with Partition Magic. (No need to reinstall XP.)
3. (Optionally) move the XP partition to the end of the disk - this will simplify your task in the future if you decide to remove the XP partition and add the space to Win7. Hide it.
4. Create a new empty partition and install Win 7 RTM on it.

That's what I would do if I were you.

 

[Ilya]

Just remember to hide the XP partition (with PM or PQBoot) before installing/running Windows 7. Do not let Windows 7 "see" the XP partition, or it may mess it up!

 

[Ramy]

Just remember to hide the XP partition (with PM or PQBoot) before installing/running Windows 7. Do not let Windows 7 "see" the XP partition, or it may mess it up!

It won't mess it up. I have already done what he is wanting to do and it works fine.

 

[Ilya]

Ok, that's good to know.

 

[diogen]

Avoid using Partition Magic on anything above XP (better yet, Win2K).

With hard drives so cheap, why not get another hard drive?

XP first, Win7 second. Instal EasyBCD on the Win7 partition:
it will allow to manipulate Win7 MBR (it isn't just boot.ini file anymore)
and if you decide to dump Win7, it will restore XP's MBR. Works very good.
And after deleting the Win7, you will remove the app, too.

Why do you need XP, exactly?

Diogen.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Avoid using Partition Magic on anything above XP (better yet, Win2K).

With hard drives so cheap, why not get another hard drive?

XP first, Win7 second. Instal EasyBCD on the Win7 partition:
it will allow to manipulate Win7 MBR (it isn't just boot.ini file anymore)
and if you decide to dump Win7, it will restore XP's MBR. Works very good.
And after deleting the Win7, you will remove the app, too.

Why do you need XP, exactly?

Diogen.

I want to keep XP for compatibility purposes and for ease of use. My wife will be using this computer as well, and just in case Windows 7 doesn't rub her right I want this to still be available for us to use. I also want to guarantee that all my older games will still run properly.

Yes, hard drives are cheap, but I want to just make the best of what I have. I already have 2 HDDs (250 + 500 GB) and I want to use approx 50 GB for XP and the rest for Windows 7.

And as I said earlier, I want to do a complete clean up. My XP has been installed for nearly 2 years (since my last reinstall) and it's running sluggish at best. I want to start off completely fresh with XP and Windows 7.

 

[BuddyBoy]

Hard drives are cheap, and you need a backup of your current system, so I'd say put in a new 1-1.5TB drive and install XP and Win 7 into their own 80-100GB primary partitions. My favorite partition manipulator/boot manager is BootIt NG (though it doesn't handle GUID partition tables).

 

[yourbeliefs]

Hard drives are cheap, and you need a backup of your current system, so I'd say put in a new 1-1.5TB drive and install XP and Win 7 into their own 80-100GB primary partitions. My favorite partition manipulator/boot manager is BootIt NG (though it doesn't handle GUID partition tables).

I've already pretty much backed up all that I need. As I said, I don't want to invest anymore money in this machine since it's already rather old (I can't even use DDR2 RAM in it) and between all the internal and external hard drives I own I have well over 1 TB of storage space available, so at this point getting another HDD is just unnecessary.

I think my plan of attack will be to delete the existing Windows 7 partition, shrink the XP partition, then reinstall XP and then install Windows 7. Then hopefully there will be much rejoicing.

 

[yourbeliefs]

To quote a famous game reviewer:

I was ready to ride the Computer Train all the way to Dual Boot Station. But it seems that on the way to Dual Boot Station, the Computer Train went off the rails around f**kary central!

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I am now left with my 2 hard drives letter assignments swapped (My bigger, storage drive is being seen as my main drive) and my main drive now has 2 unallocated, empty partitions on it. Also, it appears that my system processor doesn't have the great clairvoyance required to run Windows 7's XP mode, and given compounded by reports that I've read that certain games don't run well at all in Windows 7 (like Team Fortress 2), I again need to have a dual boot solution.

So now it's on to plan B (Unless someone here has a better solution), which is to re-image my hard drive using the disc that came with my machine, which will (assumably) wipe out the partition mess I have and bring it back to a factory install. After I update all the drivers and such, I'll shrink that partition down and then install Windows 7.

Before that though, I'm curious as to why my hard drive letters got swapped. I noticed now that when I boot up in the bios output stuff it lists the Storage drive before the main drive, which is odd since for as long as I can remember it did the other order. It's probably not a big surprise that this stuff happened after I tried using partition magic, but whatever I need to move on from that now. Does anyone know how to make sure that the main drive is always seen as the C: drive? Or do you think that using a Norton Ghost image will resolve that itself?

 

[Ramy]

First off. Why are you using partition magic if you are starting from scratch? Just use windows own partitioning stuff.

Second. Make sure that the drive you want as your C: is the Primary Master by the jumpers on the back of the drives and the other is the Primary Slave. Cable select doesn't always work for some reason.

 

[yourbeliefs]

First off. Why are you using partition magic if you are starting from scratch? Just use windows own partitioning stuff.

Second. Make sure that the drive you want as your C: is the Primary Master by the jumpers on the back of the drives and the other is the Primary Slave. Cable select doesn't always work for some reason.

I'm not using Partition Magic anymore. As far as Windows Partitioning goes, do you mean the type used in Windows Setup? Those partitioning tools are not very comprehensive. I can't merge partitions or anything.

I suppose I could try and just pop in a Windows XP cd and reinstall on the smaller partition first, and then pop in Windows 7 and get that on the other, but the XP disc that came with my computer was a little, off. For some reason when I tried to just use that to re-do my XP installation, it simply reinstalled the XP, but didn't do that important thing of FORMATTING the drive first, meaning all my files and such were still there. Of course, seeing as it didn't even ASK me to do so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised with this outcome. I could always go and get a new XP disc (via MSDN) and then just reinstall all the drivers and such manually, but that's not exactly appealing either..

I don't understand why the letters got swapped though. I thought that I had those drives configured properly beforehand, especially since they were properly recognized up until now. I'll double check that though.

 

[Ramy]

Are you not formatting the drives?

You can merge partitions by deleting them all and then recreating them the way you want them.

 

[diogen]

I don't understand why the letters got swapped though.

When installing XP, it looks for ANY partitions on ANY hard drive attached to be primary and active.
All those partitions get letters assigned before the new partition you install the system on gets one.

Windows 7 doesn't do that. Any Win7 install will show its system drive as C: when booted up.

Diogen.

 

[Ramy]

When installing XP, it looks for ANY partitions on ANY hard drive attached to be primary and active.
All those partitions get letters assigned before the new partition you install the system on gets one.

Windows 7 doesn't do that. Any Win7 install will show its system drive as C: when booted up.

Diogen.

:up Good info. Did not know that.

 

[yourbeliefs]

When installing XP, it looks for ANY partitions on ANY hard drive attached to be primary and active.
All those partitions get letters assigned before the new partition you install the system on gets one.

Windows 7 doesn't do that. Any Win7 install will show its system drive as C: when booted up.

Diogen.

...I don't quite understand what you're saying.. Do you mean that XP assigns drives itself (so the system partition letter could be something other than c ) while 7 will always show it's system drive as C:?

 

[diogen]

...I don't quite understand what you're saying.. Do you mean that XP assigns drives itself (so the system partition letter could be something other than c ) while 7 will always show it's system drive as C:?

Correct. XP assigns drive letters itself during install.
You want the current XP installations to be C: when done, make sure the PC doesn't have
any hard drives attached with primary/active partitions during installation.
(You can attach those drives later).

Diogen.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Correct. XP assigns drive letters itself during install.
You want the current XP installations to be C: when done, make sure the PC doesn't have
any hard drives attached with primary/active partitions during installation.
(You can attach those drives later).

Diogen.

I love how I have to keep catering my hardware to XP, between removing my extra hard drive and wireless network card for installation purposes..I'll hopefully have a more positive update tonight about this as I take another stab at this. I want this done soon so I can finally get back to playing Guitar Hero 5..

This sh*t will NOT beat me...

 

[delta_charlie]

Hi, I can't help any on the Win 7 but I have done a lot of dual XP and Linux setups.

A few notes to think about. XP is rude and will wipe out the MBR of any other OS during install so I always install XP first. Don't let it grab the whole HD instead select only how much HD space you want to delicate to XP. This should leave the space needed for the other OS. Use the other OS installer to formant the partition for the other OS.

What file systems does Win 7 use? Might there be a common file system that both XP and Win 7 can use? If so they could share a data partition.

A PC can support up to 4 primary partitions per drive. when I set up a dual boot box I like to use a smaller partition ( 10 to 20 GB) for drive C: then set up a much large D: for data. The two remaining can be used for the second OS.

Just some things to think about, DC