i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it. then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
dual boot xp and win7 on separate hard drives
- Thread starter martygene
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Nibiru2012
Quick Scotty, beam me up!
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Virtually all the programs that run on XP should run on Windows 7 x64, maybe an exception of a few.
You can do the install as you stated. One option would just to change the boot drive in the BIOS, which I done in the past with Linux on one hard drive and Windows 7 on the other hard drive. I did this because I don't really like boot loader software that much, and it's really not that much more time consuming either.
You can do the install as you stated. One option would just to change the boot drive in the BIOS, which I done in the past with Linux on one hard drive and Windows 7 on the other hard drive. I did this because I don't really like boot loader software that much, and it's really not that much more time consuming either.
so i still don't have a clear idea of how to install win7 on a separate hard drive without installing over XP. is there an option with the win7 install dvd that allows me to install on any drive that i want? i could assign a drive letter to the new drive and install win7 there if that is possible. but what i need to know is can i do this with XP running and not overwrite XP?