Dual Booting My new system

[Evil_Geddy_Lee]

So I ordered a new system that will be coming in a couple weeks and I am debating how to set it up. It will have windows 7 installed on a ssd and also has a 1tb hdd for data. My current system has xp installed on a sata drive.

I'm wondering if I can take my current hard drive and install it into the new system and dual boot it with windows 7 without having to reinstall anything.

 

[tomatthe]

This wouldn't be a very clean approach, and most likely wouldn't work at all without a good deal of fixing things.

Do you have a specific need for running Win XP on your new machine?

 

[Hawkeye22]

As stated, it won't work well. XP won't have the necessary drivers to work on the new motherboard and will likely BSOD. You might be able to get away with a repair install, but it will be best to start from scratch.

Also, if you really need to dual boot, the older OS always needs installed first, so you would need to install XP first, then Win 7. There are ways around this, but it adds extra work.

Sometimes it's best not to have a dual boot menu and just use the bios to switch boot drives. In this case, make sure only one drive is attached at a time when installing each of the OS's. Then whenever you boot, hit F12 or whatever bios boot menu you have and select the disk to boot off of.

 

[Evil_Geddy_Lee]

Best answer selected by Evil_Geddy_Lee.