"Redhawk" was responsible for suggesting that I use EasyBCD for this exercise given that I had an existing Win 7 OS installed and wanted to install XP Pro on the same box. He also suggested that I disconnect the Win 7 HD so as to NOT corrupt the Win 7 drive by overwriting it with XP boot loader. I wish to not only thank Redhawk for his advice but also assure others that my wish to dual boot XP from an existing Win 7 PC not be shy about using a great little piece of FREE software.....EasyBCD.
As my PC had several physical HD's (Win 7 OS installed on disc 0 - "C") I cleaned off and formatted drive "D" (disc 1) first then powered down. Disc 3 was also disconnected. This PC is a 5 year old Gigabyte P4, 2.8Ghz, 1.5gig RAM - all HD's IDE and 1 SATA DVD/CD, every day AGP 8X VC.
I then physically disconnected disc 0 (master) and connected up disc 1 (changed from slave to master) and proceeded to boot and install XP Pro SP2, then update to SP3, install Avast 5.0, all Piriform SW, Macrium Reflect (free version), MS Office 2000 (yes a very old legal copy - only installed Word & XL which is all I need on this XP dual boot box), FireFox 3.6 & Mozilla Thunderbird. Run Defraggler & CCleaner, then power down.
Swap disc 0 and disc 1 (master & slave over), boot up Win 7 (fingers crossed), all OK. Install EasyBCD and configure (took all of 10 minutes), went for the big test "RESTART".
Well I'll be..........................there it was, I was presented with the promised outcome, I was to choose "Windows 7" OR "XP Pro", I then proceeded to boot Win 7 the primary OS, I then tested and re tested booting into XP then back to Win 7, several times, running SW and connecting to the internet, send and recieve e-mails, and to date no issues or problems at all. My dual boot XP / Win 7 has been up now and working for some 48 hours. Under a Win 7 boot (drive 0 & "C") the XP Pro named drive 1 - still appears as "D" drive. Both physical HD's are partitioned 50/50 so that System & Apps on 1 partition and Data on the 2nd partition on each HD.
All I need to do now is to perform a Macrium Reflect Back-up for both OS's, create CD rescue disc for each OS and test them. I feel sure I will not have a problem.
So given my first use of EasyBCD software and the above process from "go to wo" only taking about 3 hours whith many cups of coffee during the process I have no hesitation in recommending EasyBCD for a Dual Boot system.
PS: EasyBCD is available from Neosmart Technologies