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Showing results for tags 'Dual Boot'.
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Boot Win 7 Paritition copied to Empty space after Win XP on old HDD? I plan to upgrade my main OS from Win 7 SP1 x64 to 8 to 8.1. But to take the risk out of it... I copied my main Win 7 Partition from my SSD to Empty space on old HDD after Win XP partition. (at night.. so I dont have to wait around for 200+ GB going over) SSD 240 GB: [system Reserved: 200 MB] [sSD_P1 240GB] HDD 320GB: [Win XP 33GB] [sSD_P1 Copy 240GB ][Free Space][OEM Recovery partition] I copied this using Paragon HDM 12 Pro I did not copy the [system Reserved] partition as I wasnt sure how it would fit in.. and since its 200 MB, should be easier to "move" / "copy" if needed. Now, I read that there is a way to make Win 7 bootable without the SysRrv 200 MB partition. Or do I need to copy the 200 M partition? Is there a way to make the Win 7 boot while letting the rest of the MBR & booters (Win XP and OEM Recovery) continue working? What way should I follow? What steps should I take? PPS: Once this experiment is successful, I'd like to upgrade my SSD with Win 8.. But I am wondering if I should keep the 200 M partn around or merge it.. It just creates additional 'partition's to worry about. What are the pros & cons of that? -
I have a 2001 Dell PC with Windows XP and Windows 98 SE. When I installed Windows 98 and re-installed XP about a year ago, I created a 6 GB (C:) partition for Win98 and the rest of the disk (D:) for WinXP. I edited boot.ini to give a nice menu upon boot, and all was well. Eventually, 6 GB became to small for me, and I needed to expand the partition. I booted up a live Linux USB pendrive a few days ago and used Gparted to expand the Win98 partition to 60 GB and shrink the WinXP partition. Apparently, Gparted touched something in the MBR that it shouldn't have, and I got the "Invalid system disk. Replace the disk and press any key" message when trying to boot Win98. XP had no problems booting after the partition resize. I booted up a Win98 startup floppy disk and ran sys c: which then allowed Win98 to boot up correctly, but I no longer get the boot menu to select XP. I can make XP boot again by booting up the recovery console from the CD and running fixboot, but then this makes Win98 give the "Invalid system disk" message when trying to boot it. My problem is that I can get either XP or Win98 to boot, but not both. How do I restore the proper boot sectors to allow me to dual-boot the OSes? -
OK, I'm just one week away of doing the real thing, so I'm going to review the process. It's the continuation of this thread but my last post was ignored, so I will start with a clean sheet now. I will use one SSD on MBR (UEFI on BIOS mode) with 2 partitions, XP on first, and 7 on second partition (that is, no 100Mb partition from 7). This is what I want: on XP: C: (SSD 1st partition) D: (2nd Drive) (for "Documents and Settings") on 7: C: (SSD 2nd Partition) D: (2nd Drive) (for "Documents and Settings") M: (SSD 1st Partition) I need 7 to watch XP partition for the SSD Trim, which XP can't do alone. Yet, I don't want it to override the default D: partition letter which will be used for Data on both OS, and both XP and 7 "Documents and Settings" folders. My questions are next, I pretend to use grub4dos as explained here, is that possible? I mean I will use UEFI in BIOS mode, and MBR type partitions. Also, what OS should I install first, maybe this question is linked to: what boot manager is recommended? (XP, 7, or 3rd party's). Then I also wonder what to do to avoid the 100mb partition Win7 creates. I have read that for that you better create partitions beforehand, that's fine. My question is, can I then format it to NTFS? My intention is to plug the SSD to my current XP, and partition and format to NTFS, the problem is that giving partitioning or formatting to a drive also "creates a proper boot sector on the drive", and that can cause issues. To make myself clear on a question I had on the previous thread I guess this guy had problems installing Win7 over MBR because he was on EFI mode (instead of BIOS compatibility mode), is that correct? This would be my grub4dos procedure, in the case of using 7's bootmanager: -make XP partition the root partition with:root (hd0,0)ls-check is the correct partition and make it active (as in C:), while hiding second partition (7's partition)makeactive (hd0,0)hide (hd0,1)-reboot, and install XP (7's "second" partition will now have a random letter and show as inactive), let it do the unattended, etc. reboot and load again grub4dos from CD to unhide 7 partition, make it active (default OS) by typing:unhide (hd0,1)makeactive (hd0,1)-Install Windows7, now Windows7 will install its boot sector on the XP partition (unhidden), so the 7's boot manager will recognize it and allow it to boot under the bootmanager. So in this case the Win7 boot manager will be used. Then you can go back to grub to set the XP partition active to make it the default OS.makeactive (hd0,0)The big problem here is the last step installing Windows7. I need the first (XP) partition (hd0,0) unhidden so 7 can install its boot sector on it, yet I want it hidden so in fact my Data drive which will be my default drive for "Document and Settings" is assigned the D: letter. I don't know how to make XP partition unhidden and at the same time not being D: (just a random late letter is ok).
