Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps

Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps

Julio Franco on 20 January 2009 - 10:51 · 12 comments & 13873 views

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Now that Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7 (beta) is publicly available, almost everyone is itching to get their grubby paws on a copy and take it for a test drive.

However, because this is only a beta release most people simply aren't willing to part with their established installations of Windows Vista or XP. With that mind, we're going to look at one easy way of dual booting Windows 7 Beta with either Vista or XP in three painless steps.

View: Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps

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(3 replies) #1 nozen09 on 20 Jan 2009 - 15:14

How about if user want to remove windows 7 and user want to add the partition back to Windows Vista. Can user
add the partition back to Vista? how does user do that?

#1.1 aarste on 20 Jan 2009 - 15:35

nozen09 said,

How about if user want to remove windows 7 and user want to add the partition back to Windows Vista. Can user
add the partition back to Vista? how does user do that?

Good question. I haven't personally tested this but this is a forum c&p I saved to my PC: "To get rid of the boot manager, boot into Windows XP, with your Vista or Window 7 DVD inserted go to start > run type in cmd and put in "x:bootbootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force" x being the letter of your dvd drive."

I assume the Windows 7 partition is deleted after doing that. I've also looked in bootsect.exe /help and I'm not so sure about the /force switch either.

edit: you wanted Vista, that would be /nt60 instead of /nt52

#1.2 +Chrono951 on 21 Jan 2009 - 19:31

Its much easier than that actually. If you are dual booting Vista and 7 and Vista is the first partition, then just boot into Vista. Then, use the same disk management program and delete the Windows 7 partition. Finally, right click the Vista partition and "Extend" into the unalllocated space. Done!

#1.3 nozen09 on 24 Jan 2009 - 00:08

Chrono951 said,

When i do that step will it delete the bootloader (menu with two options: “Windows 7” and "Windows Vista”) automatically. I've read somewhere that if you delete Windows 7 partition and do the extend the bootloader with with two options between Windows 7 and Windows Vista will not disappear.

#2 FaiKee on 21 Jan 2009 - 00:46

Well, I didn't burn any disc nor USB, just mounted the ISO to Daemon inside Vista and everything is just simple common sense after that, and got my multiboot Win7/Vista/XP in 15 min.

(1 reply) #3 Kushan on 21 Jan 2009 - 09:01

Keep in mind this doesn't work in reverse - if you install Windows 7/Vista (they're pretty interchangable and can handle any changes themselves when you install them - it's XP that's different) first, THEN go to install XP, you need to do some jiggery-pokery with EasyBCD. I should warn you that when I tried this, EasyBCD crashed spectacularly on XP and couldn't find the Vista/7 bootloader to fix, but the Windows 7 disk has a "boot recovery fixer" thingy on it that sorts that out, but note you may need to run it SEVERAL times to get it to actually fix the boot loader completely.
Once you have your Vista/7 bootloader working, you can use EasyBCD to easily add Windows XP to it.

#3.1 +Chrono951 on 21 Jan 2009 - 19:33

You should always keep your first partition as your primary OS. Hence, XP or Vista. That way, if you want to go back, you aren't deleting your first partition and the process is much easier.

(1 reply) #4 +Chrono951 on 21 Jan 2009 - 19:37

Also, this article doesn't seem to mention the fact that the "Shrink" option doesn't always work. If your system is fragmented or the page file is somewhere weird, the system will only let you shrink a little (like 2 gb or so). In that case, you need to do some more steps to get it to work properly.

#4.1 nunjabusiness on 22 Jan 2009 - 12:17

Correct! I found that if you move the page file to a different drive, get rid of all but the latest restore point and use ultimate defrag public domain, it is not too bad an experience. Took about 2 hours to defrag enough to make room for 7

(1 reply) #5 achong on 24 Jan 2009 - 02:23

I have 32 bit Vista Home Premium. Can I dual boot with 64 bit Windows 7 or do I have to use the 32 bit Windows 7?

#5.1 NGPixel on 31 Jan 2009 - 01:04

As far as I know, you can dual-boot in 64bit, as long as you have the hardware that supports it.

#6 PGHammer on 02 Feb 2009 - 20:11

If you can install a separate drive (older PATA hard drives are ideal for this, and they need be only 40 GB, at most, for straight experimental use), use that for Windows 7. (I use an ex-Dell 40 GB WD PATA drive.) I didn't even burn the ISO (instead, I mounted it using MagicDisc, a free-for-personal-use Vista/7-compatible virtual-drive utility), started Setup, selected the Custom option, pointing it at the freshly-formatted 40 GB partition, and away I went.

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Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps

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