dual booting existing win 7 with win xp

ah yeah, that time again, you need to test your product on an XP install and well, there are none in the office.

easy peasy, just dual boot.

1. create a partition from win 7 by shrinking one of your current partitions. i think win XP only requires about 16-20GB.

2. insert win XP cd and restart machine to boot into it.

3. go thru w the install picking the right partition!

4. when finished and when you reboot win 7 will not appear in the bootloader and it will go into XP directly.
fine.

5. dl .net framework and install easyBCD. (.net is a requirement)

6. in easybcd, choose: add new entry > click on windows drop down list and choose NT/2K/XP/2K3 and make sure you leave Automatically detect correct drive ticked.

7. go to bootloader setup > make sure install vista/7 bootloader is selected and click on write MBR.

8. that is it. reboot and the bootloader should offer you a choice.

i guess some ppl will run into trouble with this process, sometimes win 7 wont boot anymore (startup repair w win 7 DVD will help), if you get an error loading OS after XP restart in the first phase of the process (before MBR is amended) then using the win 7 install DVD you can run the following commands:

• bootrec /FixMbr
• bootrec /FixBoot
• bootrec /RebuildBcd

restart and you should be ok!