Windows7How

How to Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP

November 17, 2009

Windows 7 release has been quite a success for Microsoft. Recent statistic also shows that Windows 7 is getting relatively strong early adoption even more than the Vista and there’s no sign of slowing down. In fact, Windows 7 OS already accounted for more than 2 percent even before the launch. That’s already more than that of Linux 1 percent market share.

Even on the Beta stage of testing, Win 7 has been getting mostly positive reviews from tester besides being too similar to Vista. The final released is great, it’s fast, stable with very minimum driver problems and surpassed Vista in everyway. Call it Vista service pack or whatever if you want, nevertheless, Windows 7 is a well rounded operating system that XP users might consider to upgrade and Vista users would definitely wanted to upgrade as soon as they can. Money wise, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

If you are an XP users feeling confused and uncertainty of changing to a new OS, you might want to create dual boot of Windows 7 with XP to test it out just in case you don’t like it or it doesn’t work with your hardware. It’s a fairy simple installation process assuming that you already have at least 2 partitioned in your hard drive. Side note: If you are buying the upgrade version of Win7, you can’t create dual boot unless you have 2 licenses already in your computer. To create dual boot you need the full retail copy of Win 7.

You should already have Windows XP installed in c: drive, to create dual boot, install Windows 7 in the second drive d: for example. Before you install, make sure you have at least 16GB of free space in the drive. Now put in your Windows 7 DVD and wait for it to prompt with the installation menu. If your CD/DVD drive is not set to auto-run, go to “my computer” and double click on your optical drive. Follow the installation instruction and wait for it to complete, it’ll restart a few time in the process and require you to fill in some information. When it’s finally done, it’ll auto reboot and you’ll be prompted with choices of Windows 7 & Windows XP every time you start your PC. Congratulation! You have just created your own dual boot of Windows 7 with Windows XP.

Is that it? Yes, it’s that simple. You can even triple boot with vista in a new drive if you want. Test it out for a while and see how it works for you. You’d probably love it more than you hate it.

Even though Windows 7 is a great piece of OS in my opinion, I’d still recommend Windows XP users to create dual boot instead of replacing it. Windows 7 is not 100% compatible with all software & hardware out there, especially the older one. Although you could create an XP virtual machine in Win 7, it requires virtualization support in order to make it work which probably your hardware doesn’t support it at all. The only downside besides taking up additional hard drive space that I can think of is having you to choose between Windows before start up. It might be a little bit troublesome, but it’s not that bad right? If you are buying the full copy of Windows 7 and retain your copy of Windows XP, you always have the choices of dual boot. But if you buy the cheaper upgrade version, I guess you have already made up your mind and move on. That might not be a bad idea at all.

Filed under: Guides

Tags: driver, dual boot xp win 7, dual-boot, linux, mac, partition hard drive, service pack, vista, win 7, windows 7, xp