Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Battle Monkey of Zardoz on January 21, 2010, 12:55:09 AM
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I have a Dell, with 4 GB RAM, ATI mobility video card, 500 GB HD. It's currently running Windows 7 Ultimate with no problems. I want to partition 200GB and install XP Pro on it. I have read that installing XP after 7 that you will have boot loader problems. Is this true? Is there a fix? Or would I have to wipe, install XP first then 7?
Any help is appreciated
DM.
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I can see it being a problem... makes sense.
The Win7 boot loader will be newer code and XP will be unhappy seeing it.
If you have Win7, then install XP, and your Win7 installation becomes unavailable, I'd guess you want to re-run the Win7 installation from the CD. Not sure if Win7 has "recovery console" but a command called "fixmbr" would fix this problem if it were a 2000/XP situation instead of an XP/Win7 situation.
I'm sure Win7 has a means to repair the master boot record from the setup disk without going through a complete reinstall. Probably a gui based "inspect and repair" option.
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If you've got Windows 7 installed already, I'd just partition off that space using a Linux boot disk, install XP, and then use the Linux boot disk to replace the Windows bootloader with Grub. Grub's not the easiest thing to work with if you've never used it before, but it'd definitely work.
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So use an ubuntu CD to make the partition, the install windows and boot using grub?
And windows 7 does have a repair console and fixmbr commands work.
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Here's my plan. I will partition off the space needed and install XP on my Dell(windows 7 is already intstalled). Then after the install, I will boot from the windows 7 CD and run the fixmbr line command.
Will this work or fubar my PC?