Question Win XP with Win 7 Pro

[Bentbasin]

Hi. I have a Dell XPS 8700 w/ 2 hard drives. The boot drive had Win 7 Pro. I'd like to install Win XP Pro on the 2nd drive. Can I do this and how? Thanks!

 

[BFG-9000]

In general, disconnect the power lead from the Win 7 drive and then install XP with only the 2nd drive powered on. You can then use the BIOS to select which drive to boot from.

I will say that Haswell is a poor choice for XP as many devices will have no drivers, such as USB 3.0. A Sandy Bridge Z67 (2700k) system has full XP compatibility, and Ivy Bridge (3770k) works too as long as not using the IGP. Z77 chipsets require the Fernando AHCI driver. The fastest possible would be an X79 S2011 system with Sandy Bridge-E 3970x or Ivy Bridge-E 4960x 6-core with HT. These also need the Fernando AHCI driver.

 

[Bentbasin]

I'm not an advanced user, so to be clear have the system booted and running then pull the connectors off the boot disk? Or if you can list the steps to take, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[SkyNetRising]

I'm not an advanced user, so to be clear have the system booted and running then pull the connectors off the boot disk?

It is never recommended to connect/disconnect internal drives, while system is running.
Shut it down first.

 

[TerryLaze]

I'm not an advanced user,

Then better stay away from doing that unless you have a 100% guaranteed way of restoring your drive to the way it is now without using anything that is on the disks themselves,meaning using only external media like usb/dvd.

Get the free version of VMware or get the completely free virtualbox and install XP as a virtual machine inside them,this way there is no danger to break (make it un bootable) your system.