532h Dual boot Win7 + XP

Hi,
I have an Acer Aspire one 532h with Win 7 starter already installed, I would like to instal XP as the dual boot option.
I have searched this forum and only found one thread and that was installing Win 7 on a machine already running XP,
I would like to do the opposite!
As I have never attempted this before, some pointers would be appreciated.
I have an external CD drive and have downloaded Partition Magic so I dont need to mount the ISO or anything....
What size partition would you recommend for XP please?
Any advice appreciated.
Regards
Gary

 

I've never successfully had Partition Magic (guessing you either have PowerQuest or Symantec's version) run under Windows 7. You can create a bootable USB stick to run the DOS component, but it won't get you far as you'll come up against unknown errors with the file system.

Best one I've found is Paragon Partition Manager. It's also a free one and works under Win 7. Or you can simply right click on "My Computer" goto "Manage" and select disk management. Here you can shrink you Win 7 partition and create a new one for XP.

I've never delt with installing XP from within another operating system before, I've always clean-booted it. I would guess though, that mounting an ISO won't work properly, yes you can mount it under Win 7 and start the installation, but I would expect that when the computer reboots for the first time and boots into the actual XP installation, it's going to want to look for the disk. And since it was mounted under Win 7 and now booted into the XP setup, the mounted image won't be available. You could however, copy the contents of the Win XP disk to a folder on your Win 7 partiition, and run the instalation from there.

 

Hi Swarvey,
Thanks for your time!
I have used Paragon PM to create a new partition, 60 Gb, hope that should be enough?
All I need is XP to run memory Map and nothing else, no WiFi, internet etc....
And you were right, the Paragon is really easy to use!

So now I just connect up my External DVD drive and copy the XP disc contents into the
new partition and run setup?
Hopefully, once it is installed, will I automatically get the dual-boot option of 7 and XP on start up?
Regards
Gary

 

I've only ever done it from the older OS to the new. I.E from Windows XP to Windows 7, but in theory it should work both ways, but be careful, it might screw with the boot loader and you might end up having to run a Win 7 Startup Repair to get it going again. So make sure you also have a Windows 7 DVD handy as well.

 

Thanks for that Swarvey,
I will do another restore disc and a full backup, before I have a go!
Cheers
Gary