i have to experience trouble before actually reading this
anyway, i think there is only one way to dual boot xp and win7. and that is to prepare 2 separate ntfs partitions for the os and make them both primary. first drive is the active drive of course. installing xp on the active primary and win7 on the other primary partition. the boot loader is automatically configured by the win7 installation and puts it in the xp partition since it is the active one.
just some fyi: win7 creates a 200mb hidden partition separate from the os partition if you are installing win7 only on one hard drive and not dual boot it. for the dual boot scenario, the data in the 200mb hidden partition is stored in the xp partition.
anyway, i think there is only one way to dual boot xp and win7. and that is to prepare 2 separate ntfs partitions for the os and make them both primary. first drive is the active drive of course. installing xp on the active primary and win7 on the other primary partition. the boot loader is automatically configured by the win7 installation and puts it in the xp partition since it is the active one.
just some fyi: win7 creates a 200mb hidden partition separate from the os partition if you are installing win7 only on one hard drive and not dual boot it. for the dual boot scenario, the data in the 200mb hidden partition is stored in the xp partition.