Win 7/XP question

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If I install Win 7 (64-bit) on 1 of my hard drives (soon to be primary hard drive), will it conflict with my current Win XP (32-bit) OS at all? Do both OS need to be the same bitrate? I understand that 32-bit limits how much ram you can use, but other than that, will there be any other issues at all? I know it sounds weird, but im wantin to turn this 1 hard drive into my primary hard drive, getting rid of 2 smaller drives. I have a 1tb external drive & wish to keep it Win XP (unless theres some way I can make it Win 7 w/o erasing the data on it). Anyways, give me all the info possible. Thanks in advance.

If you need any other info, feel free to ask.
 
You mean you want to dual boot winxp and win7 off the same harddrive? You're going to need to partition it
 
there is no problems with one being 64bit and one being 32bit, you just need the 2 os's on different disks or partitions.

if you install xp first than win7 you should have no problem win7 will detect xp and add an entry in the bootloader so you can choose the os at startup.

if 7 is installed before xp you need to manually write win7 boor-loader to the mbr and manually add xp to the boot-loader.

edit:

you could just back up your data on the drive but there is no way to upgrade from xp to 7.

my current setup uses 2 drives one partitioned into 4

drive 1 (1tb)
part 1 openSuSE 11.2
part 2 linux swap partition
part 3 win7
part 5 OS X 10.6.x

drive 1 (1tb)
part 1 data

personally i find the easiest setup is to use multiple harddrives or partitions i have partitions set up for all of my operating systems than a got an other one which is olny for my data, this way i can wipe out and reinstall an OS's with out loseing any of my stuff.
 
Last edited:
Shrink your Windows XP partition on your 1TB harddrive. Create a new NTFS partition using the space you just created.
Then, install Windows 7 in that partition.
After you have done so, you won't be able to access your Windows XP install due to the two bootloaders not being friendly with eachother.

However, that's fairly easy to remedy. Just run a few commands from the Windows XP recovery console, or grab a GUI tool, and you're done.
 
seeARMS said:
Shrink your Windows XP partition on your 1TB harddrive. Create a new NTFS partition using the space you just created.
Then, install Windows 7 in that partition.
After you have done so, you won't be able to access your Windows XP install due to the two bootloaders not being friendly with eachother.

However, that's fairly easy to remedy. Just run a few commands from the Windows XP recovery console, or grab a GUI tool, and you're done.
Click to expand...


actully the win7 bootloader is compatible with windows xp and can boot xp it just dosnt work the other way around with the xp bootloader.

if you install windows 7 when there is already a XP on a differt drive or partition windows 7 will just detect it and add it the the win7 bootloader.
 
So is it better to install Win 7 on the primary drive or on the secondary drive (which is my external drive) or does it even matter?
 
unless it's esata dont install any os on the external running a OS from usb just sucks and performance will suck.
 
dont plan to install os to make external the primary. i have a 500gb inside that will be my primary drive. i just wanted to make sure that my external (1tb usb cut into 2 even partitions) will be recognized by the primary hard drive & win 7.
 
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