Windows 7 Dual boot????

ruggb

Extraordinary Member
I did a clean install of W7 on a completely separate drive with my XP system drives disconnected.
Can I modify the boot.ini on my XP system to implement a dual boot???????
What do I have to do on the W7 drive???

thx
 
Can I modify the boot.ini on my XP system to implement a dual boot???????
No. Windows XP uses "ntldr" and "boot.ini" as boot manager. Windows Vista and Windows 7 uses "bootmgr" and "\boot\bcd" as boot manager. So you need the new boot manager from Windows 7:

Connect both drives
Boot from Windows 7 installation DVD
After language selection choose "repair" function (lower left menu)
This should install the new boot manager from Windows 7
 
Not very helpful, maybe, but did you have a reason for needing to disconnect the XP installation?
It is a very awkward way to carry out the procedure.
As you have a clean installation of 7, I would suggest you reconnect the XP drive and install W7 again. It will , in the process, install a dual boot for you. You might have to reconfigure the boot.ini, maybe not, but this is easily done with a third party program such as Easybcd.
 
thx
fortunately my gigabyte MB has a function to select the drive to boot from (F12)
I seems to work pretty well, but I will give the repair install a try.
 
Did the startup repair work for you? When I try I get the msg. 'Startup repair could not detect a problem.' Then when I reboot I go straight to XP.
 
don't know much yet, but the "Repair" function booting from the install CD should not try to detect a problem - I wouldn't think. I have not tried it yet as I don't want to chance messing up my XP system and the F12 fctn of my Gigabyte works fine.
One thing -- Once I was in W7 I thought that rebooting would bring me back to my XP system - NOT. I have to shut it down, do a cold boot, and go thru the F12 process again selecting the correct drive. It is remembering someplace which system it was on and goes back to that one.
 
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