[Humza]

Ill do it in the holidays, and clean the CPU fan too. I can dual boot my computer alright but not me dads. He fliped once when he saw ubuntu dual booted.

[Troy]

Haha that sounds like how my dad would respond too! Luckily I moved out years ago.

(He is a great dad though)

[Humza]

Confirmed, it works. Since my previous posts I have a new computer and it works just fine, I have just installed XP x64 on a Windows 7 machine. Apart from a few driver issues the installation and setup was smooth.

[Troy]

It sure does work alright. I did this again recently, threw a copy of Windows Server 2008 on a separate drive for my main desktop. That way I could reboot into the Server OS and do some tinkering/breaking/learning on a particular issue I have been working on. A great way to completely stuff things up with no major consequences

[Nitro58]

I really like this dual Hdd/dual OS ideal. One question, could a Hdd with an OS already install on it just be added to the system?

[Humza]

Yes, that's the premise on which this guide is, you remove the main hard drive and install an OS then put them both in so it'll only boot from the primary one but the secondary still has an OS. As long as you can select the second HDD in the bootloader you're all guns blazing..

[Nitro58]

Humza, on 17 March 2012 - 09:13 AM, said:

Yes, that's the premise on which this guide is, you remove the main hard drive and install an OS then put them both in so it'll only boot from the primary one but the secondary still has an OS. As long as you can select the second HDD in the bootloader you're all guns blazing..

The reason I asked was your guide says to install an OS on the second drive (I get that). I was wandering about a working drive that I have in another machine, could I just move it into the machine I want to dual boot.

[Humza]

Nitro58, on 17 March 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

Humza, on 17 March 2012 - 09:13 AM, said:

Yes, that's the premise on which this guide is, you remove the main hard drive and install an OS then put them both in so it'll only boot from the primary one but the secondary still has an OS. As long as you can select the second HDD in the bootloader you're all guns blazing..

The reason I asked was your guide says to install an OS on the second drive (I get that). I was wandering about a working drive that I have in another machine, could I just move it into the machine I want to dual boot.

Yes you can

[calvert]

sorry, but no you can't - especially with windows,

the hdd from the other machine will have all drivers installed for that particular machine - not just audio and video, ALL drivers,
the operating system will also be registered with that particular hardware,
so even if it could boot then there would be the issue of validation,

there is a very good chance that all you will get is a BSOD

[Troy]

Humza, calvert - you are both right. It can be done but it may not work. Usually I find you can repair it and get it working though. Most of the time it lets you boot into safe mode if it BSOD's in normal mode. Then you can uninstall a heap of the old drivers no longer needed, one or more of which is likely causing the BSOD.

EDIT: Yes the licensing issue would still apply, Windows would likely need to be reactivated on the new hardware.

[Madhav Mehta]

Awsume Thing.

The thing was i already had windows xp in 2nd hard drive & 2nd HDD with Windows 7.i just added 2nd Drive in Boot device.nd it works....