Dual boot xp and windows 7

emperor76

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Okay, so last night, I tried to set up windows 7 and xp on dual boot. A quick google search brought to my attention that you are supposed to install xp first, so I would have to start from scratch. The problem I have is the 2nd partition on my hard drive is for backup, as I cant afford a separate drive for back up yet. My question is this, do I have to fully format the drive before hand, as obviously this would pose problems for my backed up data
 
You could install XP right over it if you wanted, the best way is to create a folder for all your backup data, chuck everything into that then install XP. But when you do make sure you select Leave current partition intact when prompted for format options.
 
Are you open to virtualization? If you already have Windows 7, you can install XP using hypervisors like VirtualPC, VirtualBox or my personal favorite, VMWare.
 
Yes I'd do it virtually and OhSnapWord said use VMware and it's quite good. Although you need a fairly good machine to run it.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies, by the time I realised there was a reply I had actually solved my dual boot problem, although I reformatted my windows 7 partition which resulted in massive amounts of time sorting out backed up data, installing updates/programs, trying and failing at getting Steam to send the activation email before it expires. So I have yet to get round to finish off sorting out xp to see if my game works, I have now found out it won't play Theme Hospital on a 64 bit system as well, so it looks like this xp dual boot was a good idea after all. The method I ended up using was a program called easy bcd, it was excellent, I just added xp to the boot list, annoyingly I found this out after formatting my windows 7 partition, so I didn't need to format after all, thanks again everyone for taking the time to reply.
 
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