Triple booting with XP and Win7

**John B** · 2012-03-02 07:14

I currently have a double boot with XP and Win7 with XP at the beginning of the boot drive and Win7 in a partition behind it. Both are invisible to the other. It just uses the boot.ini file in XP as the boot manager (one less bit of sofware to go wrong!)

Win7 could definitely do with re-installing NOW! but I do not wish to do it on top of the existing Win7.

There is plenty of room after the existing Win7 installation for a second Win7 installation (I have created an unformatted area ready for it) and I would like to do this with the idea that once everything I need is running OK on the new installation (within a couple of weeks) I could replace the old one with the new one.

1) Will it work?

2) Do I go into XP or Win7 to run the installation or just use the installation disk to boot up? (yep I know to be VERY careful where to tell the installation program where to install itself!) Will the new entry appear automatically in the boot manager in XP?

3) When I come to relacing the old Win7, is the easiest way just to take a copy of the new Win7 (I use Acronis) and replace the old one with the copy before removing the third partition when everything is working OK?

I should add that I keep all my data on separate hard drives and not on the operating system partition.

Thanks in hope!

John B

**RetiredGeek** · 2012-03-02 08:22

John,

What I would do is to first download a copy of EasyBCD you can use this to fix the boot menu when you're done.
Next I'd Image the system so you have easy recovery if Murphy shows up. If you don't have an Imaging program I'd recommend Macrium Reflect Free edition. Make sure you make the Windows PE version of the Boot/Recovery CD/USB.

When you go to do the actual install I'd boot from the DVD and install from there. You'll probably wind up with the Win 7 version of the boot loader but if the other images don't show up that's where you use EasyBCD to load them in so you'll have access to all 3 and you can set which is the default and the order they display in the Boot Menu.

Good Luck!

**Just Plain Fred** · 2012-03-02 09:20

John,
Great advice from RG... One more thing...Install EasyBCD on both OS's first ..Then also on the new...This way whichever OS decides to boot, you can easily rearrange things to your liking...Regards Fred

**John B** · 2012-03-02 17:23

Thanks both of you.
I would not have thought of EasyBCD - I like the suggestion of putting it on each OS. Actually if the working bootloader was on a Win7, it would suit me fine. I know what my job for Sunday is ...

**rmonroe36** · 2012-03-03 06:48

On my "test machine" I have 1 Windows XP-Pro installation, 2 Windows 7 installations and a Ubuntu installation. EasyBCD has been my savior a number of times when I install/reinstall an operating system not to mention Acronis and Macrium as backup tools. It's nice to know I have been following advice from RetiredGeek and Fred

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**John B** · 2012-03-03 16:04

Reassuring. I have been testing my acronis boot disk and find it disconcerting that the oder of partitions is not consistant from boot to boot and it seems to like to miss out a random partition! I think i will explore Macrium as a belt and braces measure.

**RetiredGeek** · 2012-03-03 16:16

John,

Could you be a little more specific as to the behavior you are observing. I have not observed any problems with restoring from Acronis TI 2010, what version are you using?

**John B** · 2012-03-03 16:33

Reassuring. I have been testing my acronis boot disk and find it disconcerting that the oder of partitions is not consistant from boot to boot and it seems to like to miss out a random partition! I think i will explore Macrium as a belt and braces measure.
Just been playing with EasyBCD. Just what I need!

**John B** · 2012-03-04 06:44

Sorry RetiredGeek I missed your post yesterday. I use Acronis TI Home 2010. It may be that the TI recovery disk does not like the number of disks & partitions I have. Also the recovery disk boot could not see my USB FreeAgent drive I use for most backups.

Not sure if Macrium will show Free Agent but will try.

I am currently playing with Macrium and have just noticed that since I am using the free version I have to download 1.4Gb to prepare Windows PE recovery disk. As I have a lowish download allowance between 8am and Midnight I will do that early tomorrow. It will be a useful alternative in case Acronis plays up. I have never had to use an image recovery with Acronis for several years, whereas I have had no problems with file backups either backing up or recovery. I had a free upgrade to TI 2011 but it did not work properly, reinstalled 2010 and have stuck with what worked ever since.

**RetiredGeek** · 2012-03-04 08:34

John,

What build of TI are you using? Both Fred & I have found build 7046 to be stable. You can upgrade it for free if you have an earlier version of TI 2010.

Sorry but I don't have any experience using TI with a Free Agent drive I use only WD drives personally. I have used a Free Agent drive in our homeowners association office and it is not nearly as easy to use as the WD's IMHO, but then again that may be just a familiarity issue on my part. Are you using it as a USB attached device or as a Network Attached Device {NAS}?

**John B** · 2012-03-04 11:21

I am using the same build. I have no complainst about it normally at all. I noticed it carefully when loading from the boot disk just now that it was not loading a driver so there might be something odd about my system and that could explain not seeing the two USB drives.

I am using a FreeAgent and a FreeAgent GoFlex Drive both connected by USB and they worked happily from day one and cause no problems accepting assorted scheduled backups from TI (mostly file backups).

Just checked but it does connect to my LAN automatically and can see my netbook better than the computer does normally

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