Windows XP requires that your BIOS is configured in IDE/Legacy mode. Alternatively, you can streamline AHCI drivers into your windows image, but this is mostly an issue for Haswell or later boards. Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge is the last platform to have official support for XP.

Kepler GPUs are also supported in XP, up to the GTX 960. A GTX 980/980ti or other Kepler GPU can work to with a simple inf mod. The amount of RAM in your machine doesn't matter. XP can only address about 3.3gb of it, but having more doesn't make the OS less stable or behave differently in anyway

I don't have any experience with boot managers, but I do know they exist. Grub is used by linux and is open source. It will usually configure itself to play nice with windows when you install most linux distros, but you can also manually edit it, and I am sure you can install GRUB without linux if you want to. GRUB can do that like timeout, have a default selection, even have a custom background and other stuff. I think it will work even if the operating systems are on different hard drives, so you don't have to partition everything on a single disc. There are also other boot managers, like easyBCD or winboot or what have you, which might have pretty UIs that you can use instead of editing a text file.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Windows XP requires that your BIOS is configured in IDE/Legacy mode. Alternatively, you can streamline AHCI drivers into your windows image, but this is mostly an issue for Haswell or later boards. Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge is the last platform to have official support for XP.

Hmm, I wonder if this could be an issue. The only option in my BIOS that seems relevant to this is "SATA MODE", it can be set to IDE, ACHI, or RAID mode. It must remain in RAID mode, however because my Windows 7 install is on two 256GB SSDs that run in RAID. There are additional SATA ports on the board, though. Perhaps once I install another drive it will give an option for that one individually? I'll try.

infiniteclouds wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

Windows XP requires that your BIOS is configured in IDE/Legacy mode. Alternatively, you can streamline AHCI drivers into your windows image, but this is mostly an issue for Haswell or later boards. Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge is the last platform to have official support for XP.

Hmm, I wonder if this could be an issue. The only option in my BIOS that seems relevant to this is "SATA MODE", it can be set to IDE, ACHI, or RAID mode. It must remain in RAID mode, however because my Windows 7 install is on two 256GB SSDs that run in RAID. There are additional SATA ports on the board, though. Perhaps once I install another drive it will give an option for that one individually? I'll try.

If your motherboard has a RAID driver for XP you can load it while installing the OS. I ran RAID on XP back in the day, although I think this was on AM2+.

Before doing anything, make a backup. For an operating system, a full system image is best, using something like Ghost; allowing you to go back to the exact same drive state before you started experimenting.

Normally, if you were dual booting XP and Win7 you'd install XP first. That way Windows 7 doesn't have to create that little system partition as it'll put those files on the XP partition and most importantly, it'll automatically configure the boot manager to have both entries.

If you don't want to reinstall Win7, you could try doing an XP install to another partition (ideally the same drive as Win7) and afterwards you will only be able to boot XP. At this stage you could go all ninja or simply try booting the Windows 7 DVD and use the repair option. Did I mention to make a backup first? I can't say 100% every time the repair option will work and you're at the recovery command line, cross that bridge when you get there. (you made a backup, right?)

When you're done, when each system boots it should be drive C:
You can use Disk Management (found in Administrative Tools, or right clicking 'My Computer' and click 'Manage') to choose what partitions appear and what drive letter they appear as.

There are also boot managers like Plop if you want to keep the installations totally separate and not dependent on each other which is what they'd theoretically be if you just installed XP and didn't tinker with the Windows 7 boot manager. Plop would switch out which partition is active based on boot entries you create. It installs / fits in the bootloader with no other requirements so is safe to try out. Personally, for just XP and Win7, the Windows 7 Boot Manager works great so there's no need for it in this situation.

For slipstreaming the Intel AHCI/RAID (RST) drivers, you can use nLite to make a custom XP install disk. https://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html
It's very simple to do, while there, you have the option to spend a bit of time configuring settings in advance, removing stuff you're certain you'll never use, disabling/removing services, drivers and components to have a very fast booting system with low RAM utilisation.
Intel RST drivers v11.2.0.1006 are the "best", this guy said so 😉 https://www.win-raid.com/t25f23-Which-are-the … ID-drivers.html
(seriously though, they are)

With your system, the XP boot screen should be a brief flash on the screen, the bar get's maybe 10% across - on a slimmed down fresh install with carefully chosen drivers and services you didn't remove but aren't using, set to manual or disabled as appropriate.

MAKE A BACKUP

All this applies even if I'm not doing dual-boot on a single drive/separate partitions but rather on separate SSDs altogether?

Not too sure what to say here but I'm positive there are official intel raid mode drivers for XP under ivybridge. Since this was basically the main question than thats all I want to say, that based on the thread creater specs dual booting should be no issue between XP and win 7, if it doesn't work than the problem isn't with the system or the operating systems of choice. 🤣

infiniteclouds wrote:

All this applies even if I'm not doing dual-boot on a single drive/separate partitions but rather on separate SSDs altogether?

Yes, although you're opening up more avenues for things to go wrong. If XP is installed to disk 2, will the installer write the bootloader to disk 1? Your backup won't be a single operation. Etc.
If you decide to go with the two drives, two OS setup and not have to reinstall Win7. I would disconnect/disable your Win7 array, install XP and then Plop. When the Win7 array is back, you can create a boot entry for it in Plop. You should also have BIOS control over boot before Plop is in place.

Interesting -- I thought it would actually be easier having them on separate drives. Frankly, I've never introduced another internal drive to my set-up at all and not sure how introducing a 3rd drive (of a different size - 500gb in this case) when I already have two drives (256gb) running in Raid 0.

The idea of disconnecting the two RAID 0s that have Win7 while I install the new drive with XP sounds good and I'll make a back-up before doing anything. I'll try Clonezilla but I suppose I will need to get yet another another storage device to fit an image of my current set-up? I'll also get Plop.

Thanks very much for the assistance sir!

Everyone's requirements are different but 500GB is a lot of space for an XP boot volume and it's not essential to have all your data on the C: drive. You can always shrink partitions to make space for a little boot partition.

Actually I'd say it's advantageous to have your data and backups on a separate drive as a central storage space for all operating systems. Another benefit is you can restore a known good system image at any time without potentially losing data if that's how you've arranged things. If it's fast enough, you can utilise it as a steam directory or scratch/swap space too.
Making a system image before making major changes becomes faster and easier. Hopefully the speed and ease makes it routine. Sooner or later it'll save you a few headaches.

I think a lot of this is complicated by the fact that I have my Windows 7 install in Raid 0 (256GBx2). Even putting off adding another OS to the system, I'm not sure I can even add an additional internal drive outside this array.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I think a lot of this is complicated by the fact that I have my Windows 7 install in Raid 0 (256GBx2). Even putting off adding another OS to the system, I'm not sure I can even add an additional internal drive outside this array.

You can, at least you can with the Intel chipset based controller.