Dspritzman

Distinguished
Jun 28, 2010
5
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18,510
Hello, I have been trying to install Windows XP as a second OS as I already have Windows 7 Ultimate installed. Unfortunately, after I select a partition, format it, and reboot the system stalls on the screen after the BIOS that has something to do with a list of devices and such. After 10 or so seconds a few characters and letters go blank randomly on the page. I rebooted and selected my cd drive as the boot device and accidentally didn't press a button in time to boot and a bunch of highlighted numbers were thrown all over the screen and a random smiley face on one of the lines. I can only boot into windows 7 by going into the recovery disk, repairing the startup, and restarting the computer. This fixes it until I try to reinstall windows xp. I have tried several copies of windows xp, one of which I have never had a problem with, and I still get the same problem. I have used the command prompt in the windows 7 recovery disk to do /FixBoot, /FixMbr, and I have tried fixing the MBR through Bootsect. None of it has worked and I don't know what else to do. I assume its a virus, but I don't know if it's on the hard drive or the mobo's BIOS as that screen seems to still be part of the BIOS but idk.

Also, I just reformatted Windows 7 last week with no problem.

Any help is appreciated!
 
I don't know what the smiley face is about but I do know from experience that the easiest way to do a dual or triple boot with XP, Vista and W7 is to start with a clean HDD then partition it into however many OS's that you want to run and install XP on the first one and the subsequent OS's on the second and third but you must install them in the order that they were released.
 

That's interesting because I was having similar issues trying to install W7 64 as the second OS on my gaming rig which has XP32 as the base OS and W7 wouldn't boot unless the install disc was in the DVD drive and fix MBR or fix boot didn't work but it dual boots just fine if I use Vista 32 as the second OS.
 

Cheers for that mate, I'll give it a go next time I'm bored and get the itch to do something to my gaming rig.