XP and 2000 dual boot when XP was installed first.

ImperialGuardsman

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Sep 22, 2014
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Hello everyone,

I hope that this isn't one of those topics that has been beaten to death, but here I go!

I just built an XP gaming rig for all of my games that are too new for my 98SE machine but too old to really work with 7 64bit. Plus, you wouldn't ask me to give up hardware accelerated audio and EAX now would you? Anyhoo, I also have a copy of Windows 2000 and rather than build another old machine (yes I know about virtual machines but I'm not shooting for that), I wanted to know if I could dual boot without wiping the drive and starting over with 2000 first. I realize that it would have been best to start with 2000, but I was not thinking ahead. I have already installed near 50 gigs worth of software (games and OS included) so it would be a pain to start over. I do have a second hard drive that I can use.

The machine:
Asus P5b-Deluxe Wifi AP (Socket 775)
Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (sweet sweet Netburst heat! :hot:) (Did I mention I'm an AMD guy?)
Nvidia Geforce 9800gt (I'm also an ATI Radeon guy...)
4 gigs of Crucial Balistix Sport 800mhz CAS 5 RAM
250gig Crucial SSD
Seasonic Gold 550 watt power supply
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
All wrapped up in traditional a beige case (beige case master race :pt1cable:)

The spare drive is a 640 gig WD Caviar Blue.


Thanks for reading!
 
Solution
If you have two separate physical disks (not partitions, but disks), this is perfectly doable. Disconnect the drive you are using now and connect the spare drive, install whatever OS you wish to it, and afterwards connect the other drive.

You can then select which one to boot via BIOS, or by pressing F8 or F11 (depends on the mobo) to bring up the boot menu during POST.

Installing older version of Windows after the newer one on the same drive won't work, so this is the easiest way.
If you have two separate physical disks (not partitions, but disks), this is perfectly doable. Disconnect the drive you are using now and connect the spare drive, install whatever OS you wish to it, and afterwards connect the other drive.

You can then select which one to boot via BIOS, or by pressing F8 or F11 (depends on the mobo) to bring up the boot menu during POST.

Installing older version of Windows after the newer one on the same drive won't work, so this is the easiest way.
 
Solution

ImperialGuardsman

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Sep 22, 2014
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Great to know! Is there a way to make the boot menu present each time the computer is turned on?

Thanks.