The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Red_Maw,

When I tried Win 7, I later found that it has to be the first installed OS on the system, if you want Dual-Boot. Any second OS has to be installed after Win 7. You can't, (or aren't supposed to) add Win 7 as the secondary boot. It has to be the Primary system OS! I missed that the first time. I tried the same thing with XP 64 bit, with about the same results!LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Well...I dont know. But my brothers got dual boot XP and windows 7. Separate drives. And XP was installed first...

I left XP alone, in case his woman didn't like Windows 7. But she likes it minus a few bugs here and there. E.g GIF images are not displayed properly, the NIC is buggy on windows 7.

It gives the option before startup, to boot either windows 7, or "earlier version of windows".

 

They key is having them on separate drives (which you did). As far as I know vista and win7 are only cause problems if they share a hdd.

 

Oman7,
I didn't say that it wouldn't work but if you read the requirements and things you need to know before installing Win 7, it says that it has to be installed before any other OS for Dual-Boot, in order to work properly. After somewhat the same experience with XP-64bit, I would suspect that it has something to do with the Master Boot Record and the Win 7 Registry!

P.S. If what I've just read is accurate, you apparently can put Win7 and XP on the same physical drive as XP, but you can't upgrade from XP to Win 7! Punishment for the people with XP that raised such a fuss about Vista? You can upgrade Viata! See the link in the link I posted to Red_Maw!

Russ

 

Red_Maw,
Here's a little tutorial on how to install Win 7 in dual-Boot, with XP already installed!

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_windows_xp_and_windows_7_xp_installed_first.htm

Russ

 

Definitely run some RAM tests before buying a new PSU... it's worth the time and effort to check it before going down the line with guesses.... good luck...

 

Good stuff Russ, thanks I'll either do that or put it on my raptor, haven't decided yet if there be enough space for both OS's on my current 80GB hdd (though there probably will be once I clean stuff up).

 

Red_Maw,
You're Welcome! As I understand it you can't put it on such a small drive, not while setting up Dual Boot. I believe that you need a 100GB folder for Win 7! My take on it is that it will contain Files that XP can't read! I know the first time with the early free one, there were issues accessing certain things. That and the drive letters changing depending on which OS you started the computer with. In my case "C" became "E", and E was the new "C", which made the old "C", "E" again. It switched depending on the OS! Very Confusing!

Russ

 

Hahah yeah the drive letters change, but if I remember correctly the names will stay the same. Win7 only reserves 100MB for system files and only needs about 20 GB of free space to be installed. I've dual booted win7 and linux on the previously mentioned 80 GB hdd without any problems.

 

P.S. If what I've just read is accurate, you apparently can put Win7 and XP on the same physical drive as XP, but you can't upgrade from XP to Win 7! Punishment for the people with XP that raised such a fuss about Vista? You can upgrade Viata! See the link in the link I posted to Red_Maw!

Russ[/quote]


I was going to bring this up earlier but I forgot. Is it just me or did Vista have a very short life span? Or is Micro$oft going back to it's old ways of short lived life spans.

But it's still XP that wins against all with last month still having 71.79% of users while Vista is still low with 18.80%.

 

Naming your hard drives, not just assuming a letter helped me with that problem.
I dont mean to bring it up again but my experiments with solid state discs and Win7, offloading pagefiles, Temp IE and Firefox folders, offloading anything with excessive writes to spare disc...the spare disc to offload these files on my home server is the second partition of a hdd with my XP on the first. Both OS share data and work off it. So naming the OS partition the data partition the SSD win7 partition and so on kept me from looking at letters because the names carried over from 1 OS to the other...

 

As far as I'm aware Vista just plain sucks for enthusiasts and home users alike. Windows 7 is their way of making amends. Vista will be dropped completely when 7 releases and they're even cutting off support for Vista way sooner than they originally planned.

Vista has had an extremely short life cycle for a reason. Nobody actually uses it. Not sure if this is true but I've heard there are more people Using 7 right now than Vista!

 

Vista has had an extremely short life cycle for a reason. Nobody actually uses it. Not sure if this is true but I've heard there are more people Using 7 right now than Vista![/quote]


Actually, Win 7 while still doesn't have as many it's gaining more support than Vista when it was in RC mode. With the number of users last month on Win 7 being around 1-1.7%.

 

I was going to bring this up earlier but I forgot. Is it just me or did Vista have a very short life span? Or is Micro$oft going back to it's old ways of short lived life spans. But it's still XP that wins against all with last month still having 71.79% of users while Vista is still low with 18.80%.[/quote]
Mike,
It's all in how you look at it. If you liked it it wasn't long enough, but far too many people disliked it in favor of Specifically XP! Those people believe that it was way too long lived! Not being able to upgrade from XP to Win 7, is payback from the richest man in the world!

Russ

 

Mike,
It's all in how you look at it. If you liked it it wasn't long enough, but far too many people disliked it in favor of Specifically XP! Those people believe that it was way too long lived! Not being able to upgrade from XP to Win 7, is payback from the richest man in the world!

Russ[/quote]


Yea that kind of stinks that I can't upgrade. But I'm one that like to see a new OS out for a little bit before I buy. That way I can see all the bugs and glitches.

 

IF win7 has more useres than vista, it will be becuase its free.

its not a bad OS, unless ofc if yuo use underpowered hardware with it. though sam would disagree

win7 is just vista with less ram usage, i dont see why people are liking it to a brand new OS.

BTW vista is being replaced in nearly 3 years since it was released which was a normal release rate for microsoft, just the gap between XP and Vista was athe exception.



This by anadtech is Very intresting:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3640&p=2

a 3.8GHz i7 has less powerconsumption than a stock clocked x4 965BE.

now personally i couldnt give a crap about powerconsumption but it is intresting.

 

BTW vista is being replaced in nearly 3 years since it was released which was a normal release rate for microsoft, just the gap between XP and Vista was athe exception.

------------------------------------------------


While that is true my issue with Vista was it was Windows ME all over again.

If people remember back in 2000 when this was released it was to over take Win 98 however, it was the pre XP against Vista era. Meaning that Win ME was so non-function that many people either went back to Win 98 or just stayed with the OS.

It wasn't till Win XP was released and broken in a bit that many people moved on from Win 98. So maybe this process will repeat itself with Win 7.

 

what was it that made it ME, in so many eyes?

 

I checked out Memtest86, it seems you can't use thumbdrive unless your running Linux?

 

Although MS say you can't upgrade directly from XP it's perfectly possible ;-)