Messed up dual boot install, help please!

[hmunster123]

I was running Windows 7 64bit on my HP laptop. I also installed Windows XP on another partition. Now when I boot I'm only seeing XP come up. I went to advanced section in "startup and recovery" but it's only showing XP as a choice. XP is the F drive and D drive is all my Windows 7 files. Any suggestions? Have never tried this so obviously I did something wrong. Thanks.

 

[Dugimodo]

As a general rule when setting up dual boot with different windows versions you need to install the older version first because XP doesn't know about 7 but 7 does know about XP if you see what I mean. That way you would get a boot menu.

Here's a tutorial for the way you did it, step 4 onwards should help you sort this out http://bootstrike.com/WindowsVista/dualbootvistaxp.php

 

[hmunster123]

Thanks. Let me get back to you next week. I might have three partitions, can't remember as my laptop is at work and I'm not there until next Tuesday.

 

[hmunster123]

Thanks. It looks like I have three partitions, C which says "System Reserved" D and F. D seems to be all the files for Windows 7 even though it won't dual boot. Any suggestions besides the link you send me?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks. It looks like I have three partitions, C which says "System Reserved" D and F. D seems to be all the files for Windows 7 even though it won't dual boot. Any suggestions besides the link you send me?

From within XP, the System Reserved is seen as the C drive letter, and the Win 7 partition is the D?
That's not terrible, because whichever OS is running doesn't really care what the 'other OS' is in.

However, as indicated above, the XP install completely screwed the previous Win 7 install and boot loader.

Lacking a full drive backup from when only Win 7 existed, I don't think there's a way to "fix" this. Apart from starting over completely, of course. Full wipe and reinstall.


What is the desire for XP in a dualboot? If I absolutely needed XP for something, I'd run that in a VM, rather than a direct boot configuration.

 

[hmunster123]

I was trying to run software for an old scanner on XP but it didn't work anyway so I'm going to wipe the whole thing and start over. The software is 32 bit and computer is 64 bit. I assume thats why its not working. Thanks all for answers, much appreciated.

 

[Dugimodo]

The guide I linked should work, if it doesn't I don't have any other suggestions sorry.