Dual boot OS on 2 HDD's using EasyBCD help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gabriel Knight
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Gabriel Knight

I have made a decision to use two hard drives one for XP and one for Win7 as
a dual boot using EasyBCD but I have some questions on how to do this, do I
install XP on one hdd only meaning I unplug the Win7 hard drive till the XP
install is complete and then unplug the XP drive and plug in the Win7 drive
and install Win7, then, run Win7 and use EasyBCD to add the XP drive into
the boot record? Or is this wrong? Im using 1TB drives each I dont need to
dual boot the operating systems on just one hard drive with 2 partitions as
I have 6 1TB drives to play with.

Regards all ,GK.
 
The way you are aiming to set it up on 2 separate Hard Drives works very
well.
If your Mobo BIOS supports the F8 function where during boot you push F8 to
access
the BIOS HD boot list and then chose which drive to boot from you wont need
EasyBCD.
Whichever drive you Boot into will be registered as the C drive. Programs
would need to be installed
twice...once under each OS but they can be installed into the same location
under each OS.
When you decide you dont need XP anymore it easy to just format that drive
with no other changes needed

You can use EasyBCD to configure the Boot Menu that W7 creates . its fairly
easy once you have the
2 OS installed on the 2 seperate drives and upon boot you get a choice of
which OS to start with.

You can install XP first and leaving that HD connected install W7 onto
another HD and the boot menu will
be created by itself.Again which ever OS you start with will be designated
as the C drive.
Once all programs have been installed under XP during the W7 installation
most programs will be read
and the correct registry entries created
hope this helps
peter


Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, and wine in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
"Gabriel Knight" wrote in message

I have made a decision to use two hard drives one for XP and one for Win7 as
a dual boot using EasyBCD but I have some questions on how to do this, do I
install XP on one hdd only meaning I unplug the Win7 hard drive till the XP
install is complete and then unplug the XP drive and plug in the Win7 drive
and install Win7, then, run Win7 and use EasyBCD to add the XP drive into
the boot record? Or is this wrong? Im using 1TB drives each I dont need to
dual boot the operating systems on just one hard drive with 2 partitions as
I have 6 1TB drives to play with.

Regards all ,GK.
 
Gabriel said:
I have made a decision to use two hard drives one for XP and one for Win7 as
a dual boot using EasyBCD but I have some questions on how to do this, do I
install XP on one hdd only meaning I unplug the Win7 hard drive till the XP
install is complete and then unplug the XP drive and plug in the Win7 drive
and install Win7, then, run Win7 and use EasyBCD to add the XP drive into
the boot record? Or is this wrong? Im using 1TB drives each I dont need to
dual boot the operating systems on just one hard drive with 2 partitions as
I have 6 1TB drives to play with.

Regards all ,GK.
Click to expand...

I install mine completely independently. That's similar to your procedure
(unplug disks, install each OS all by itself). It skips the EasyBCD step.

I control booting from the BIOS. I press F8 on my Asus motherboard,
and a popup boot menu appears. In it is a list of disks. I can
select the first or second or third disk to boot from. And the active
partition on that disk, does the rest.

The advantage of this approach, is "zero entanglements" between
disk drives. Using EasyBCD doesn't mess things up that bad,
so you could indeed use your suggested method (where Win7 controls booting).
If your WinXP disk needed to be unplugged, the other disk would likely only
be upset if you tried to select WinXP from the boot menu. So it wouldn't
be a big deal.

I like to control booting from the BIOS, for peace of mind. I can
(and do) unplug the disks at random, and each disk is responsible for
booting on its own. I have a total of three disks now like that,
Win2K, WinXP, and Win8 being the OSes. WinXP is the everyday OS.

Paul
 
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