My idea is to setup a dual boot with Windows 7 and XP, and I want each OS to get his system drive as C:. On the other hand, I would like each OS don't see other partition.
Windows 7 is the main OS, XP is for legacy softwares (I don't have enough RAM to install VM).
Is there a simple way to do that?
Best Answer
Yes, there's a way. Possible: yes. Simple: Possibly.
First let's clear up some terminology. What you're talking about is the boot volume. That's the Microsoft terminology, and I'm going to be using it throughout this answer, so as to not confuse you when you read the articles hyperlinked from this answer that use the same terminology. You want each operating system to have its own boot volume.
Fortunately, that's actually standard operating procedure for the Windows 7 installer. It's even SOP for the Windows 7 installer, subject to considerations that I'll outline in a moment, to give the Windows 7 boot drive the drive letter 'C'. So most of what you want will just happen.
What you also want, which is the very important thing that is probably the most complex part of the procedure, is a single system volume. This is necessary in order to dual boot. If you want to dual boot, you pretty much must use Microsoft's Boot Manager as the primary boot manager. It's far too painful to try getting Windows XP's
NTLDR
to boostrap Windows 7. Whereas getting Microsoft's Boot Manager to bootstrap Windows XP is fairly easy. If you must use Microsoft's Boot Manager, you must, in turn, have a separate, single, system partition. That's where Microsoft's Boot Manager is going to live.The procedure, in overview, is:
ntldr
,boot.ini
, andntdetect.com
need to be copied from the root directory of your Windows XP partition into your system volume's root directory.remove letter
command indiskpart
, when booted into each operating system.It is possible to stuff up this procedure. One way of stuffing up results in Windows 7 treating the Windows XP partition as the system volume. Fortunately, Microsoft has a lengthy step-by-step procedure for getting out of that particular mess and ending up, as here, with Microsoft Boot Manager and the Windows XP loader in a single separate shared system partition, with Windows XP and Windows 7 each having their own boot partitions.
Another way of stuffing up, that leads to error messages when one reboots after installing Windows 7, is to somehow end up with a Windows NT 5.x NTFS VBR on the system partition rather than the Windows NT 6.1 NTFS VBR that should be there in order to invoke Microsoft's Boot Manager, and that Windows 7 installation would have put there. Microsoft has a step-by-step procedure, covering some of the same ground as M. McTavish did, for getting out of that mess, too.