dual booting pc

HI,This thread is about dual booting a PC that has 2 HDD'S in it WINXP and WIN 7 i have seen some mention about using the F8 key but not sure on to do this,right now i use the BIOS to change boot order to go from
WINXP TO WIN 7 is there simple tutorial on how to do this,thanks

 

when installing win 7 it should have automatically picked up you had xp on the other drive,you should be able to add xp to win 7 boot menu, only reason it wouldn't show at boot is if you had set timeout to 0

there is a software that can be installed on win 7 which can give options at boot time however i can't recall its name,personally i'd install linux to an extended partition on either drive & let grub be the boot select screen,

edit: this may be of interest
http://www.infopackets.com/news/9387/how-repair-windows-dual-boot-multi-boot

 

Well i went into youtube and there was video on how to partition a HDD and add other OS'S to HDD.
The HDD i have with WIN 7 on it is a 1TB HDD,so i thought i could make 3 partitions (1)WIN 7,(2)WINXP,(3)linux does
this sound like a plan,i have the WINXP install disk which came with this PC.
The one fly in the ointment is i would like transfer all of what is on the original WINXP OS you know files&folders but all of that is on another HDD and i have not got it straight in my head on how to do the transfer just any ideas on how to accomplish would be appreciated as that HDD is about 7yrs. old so it is getting to its end of life span plus it would be nice to have it all on one HDD.

 

I use the free version of EasyBCD to select between two drives.
One drive has Win 7 Home edition, the other drive Win Ultimate.
Home edition is set as the default with a five second timeout (or key press - whichever is first)
I prefer to have the OS's physically separated rather have everything going west on a single drive failure.
A third drive is used for all data like documents etc on either setup.
All three internal drives are 120GB SSD's which meets my needs as far as installed programs and data.

 

If the hdd that has xp on it came from the pc you want to use xp on, just use an imaging software to clone the hard drive or clone partition or just create an image file of xp & restore it to the 1tb,if at all possible have xp first (best option imo) or place it on a second hdd

easeus todo backup is free for personal use
note:if in the future you want to create regular image file backups repost if you intend to use easeus as the newer versions only allow normal compression in the free version,however the earlier versions allowed medium compression which saves more space & i have em,there are other free alternative imaging software at sourceforge & other places,my minds blank at the mo on what they're called

if the hdd with xp did not come from that computer but you still have the old computer & it still works,create an image file using differential hardware option,it will restore xp to the new computer without the drivers to avoid conflicts it works suprisingly well.

EasyBCD was the software i was thinking of

 

when i get my new pc i will be installing zorin os witch can riun exe,deb,tgz files and also has a look of windows 7 and works like with the start menu looking like windows and in the bottom left hand corner.

if your not use to using linux or never have this is the best option for people that dont want to pay for a windows upgrade. there are also some videos on youtube about zorin os have a look and see what you all think.

http://zorin-os.com/

 

Here's something that could make feel warm&fuzzy i was playing a game of solitaire then out of nowhere i lost the game PC went home page,then up pops WINDOWS BOOT LOADER to my surprise i had been looking into doing a dual boot
on my PC but never got any farther then looking at different programs on how to do same this is one of reasons i have a hard time pursuing some things when it comes to making major changes to my PC this is what happened when wanted to transfer all i could from the WINXP OS to the WIN7 OS and ended up doubling up what was on the WINXP OS so now i
139GB of data on it,instead of 70GB'S.
It is a good thing i lost the key to where i keep my baseball bat otherwise this PC WOULD BE A WHIMPERING PILE OF METAL

 

By data you mean photo's etc,stuff like that i store on a separate partition specifically for it as all OS's can see it including linux

The other option is forget about xp all togeather,unless theirs a particular software or something that win 7 can't run

chefdamo mentions zorin,personally i'd steer clear of it & install a distro that's more stable something like sabayon perhaps,best person to advise on other stable versions of linux is member ps355528 ,i've used zorin on & off since v3,it's up to v9.0 if i recall i gave up after v8.0 at least for the time being

 

What i mean by data is to me is everything outside of the OS and i am not too sure about that.
Hers a idea i have been thinking about doing and i think it is reasonable is to partition the 1TB into at least 3 partitions as such
(1) WIN7,(2) WINXP,(3) LINUX that would give me about 300GB'S per partition,i have the install disk for WINXP&WIN7.
My biggest problem at this point is i have not gotten a grip on how to do all of this safely so as not to destroy all data i have on these two disks.

 

HI,ddp, this the make and model of PC,DELL E521 DIMENSION.

 

Well heres another thought i have is i have a 500GB W/D external HDD if i was to wipe the HDD clean would i be able download all of what i have on the WINXP HDD and install it on the WIN 7 HDD.

 

So you have 2 hdd's both with OS's & both came or were installed in the dimension,if that's the case all that needs doing is install win 7 hdd into primary slot,then the xp hdd into the 2nd all that's required is either setup the win 7 boot config to include the xp drive or an easier method install easybcd or linux;personally i'd use linux then install grub customizer to linux to allow easy setup of which os is default boot,the external you speak of can be used to house backup images of C of xp & win 7 or just docs & settings,however 1 backup is not enough it would pay to have an extra external or two

other option & would be my preference is clone xp to 500gb,then create extended partition install win 7 manually then linux which personally is a better way.So called data as mentioned below can be held in a seperate data partition after win 7 & so will avoid doubling up on movies etc & can be accessed by all three OS's

the only data that matters is photo's,music,email contacts,movies & perhaps skype contacts all other so called data like software can be reinstalled & recovered from images or file backups

To continue as you want by placing xp beside win 7 may be an issue,it can be done however it wouldn't be my 1st choice.
It would require imaging or restoration of an image of xp to partition 2,then it would require changing the boot.ini file to point to the correct partition that's easy enough.I'm not sure if easeus could do the imaging required, norton ghost could & most probably acronis both of those however are not free.Link below has free imaging software options
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm