Perfect installation of Windows 7/XP dual system in one partition

The conventional method of installing dual systems is to install different systems in different partitions, so that not only the partitions are planned in advance, but also the backup and maintenance of the dual systems is very troublesome. . Today, I teach you a new way to turn the system into a single file, and you can place it in any partition, and you can move it as you like. Backup and restore can be copied and pasted.

Step by step file system production process

At present, Windows 7 and Windows XP (hereinafter referred to as Win7 and XP respectively) are the two most commonly used systems, and are also dual systems that many users choose to install. . Win7 native support is started by virtual disk (hereinafter referred to as VHD). Windows XP is driven by "firadisk" and can also be started in mirror mode.

So based on the above characteristics, for users who install the "Win7+XP" dual system, we can actually not install the physical system, but just make a VHD file and an image file to enjoy the dual system. In order to make everyone more clear about the operation process, we will subdivide the operation steps into the following 5 steps, you only need to follow this process.

1. Create a VHD disk based on the existing XP or Win7 system;

2. Load the VHD disk and install the Win7 system on the disk, and then obtain the Win7 single file system;

The XP single file system is obtained according to the method described in "Putting the system into memory and creating a high-speed RAMOS".

3. Copy the necessary startup files to the D disk in WinPE. And format the C drive, and change the boot record to NT60 format;

4. Copy the boot file and single file system to the C drive;

5. Run "bcdtool." in WinPE. Exe", in turn, configures the startup of Win7 and XP single file systems.

Tip: Please click the download for the software required in this article. After downloading, save all the files in the root directory of the D drive. At the same time, in order to facilitate the reader's query, related articles are also included in the compression package.

First Steps Get Win7 Single File System

Because XP system does not support creating and loading VHD, XP users must first prepare a WinPE system, then create and load VHD to install it. The method is very simple, just copy all the files in the Win7 CD to the D drive, then copy the downloaded "geldr" file to the C drive, then open the "c:\\boot.ini" to add and start (for details, see 2010). The 18th issue of "No CD-ROM? Multi-boot CD "inserted" hard disk" article). After completing the system, restart the system and enter WinPE. Then start the command prompt and enter the command "Diskpart /s d:\\diskpart.txt" to create and load the VHD.

Note: Win7 users directly enter the system, start the "command prompt" program as an administrator and execute the above commands.

Next, continue to enter "d:\\sources\\setup.exe" in the command prompt window to activate the installation (assuming that all Win7 files have been copied to the D drive), in "You want to install the system to Which partition is the step to install the system to the virtual hard disk created above, this virtual hard disk is labeled "disk1 partion 1".

OK, the rest of the operation follow the on-screen instructions to complete the Win7 installation, so you get the Win7 single file system installed in "D:\\win7.vhd".

Tip: Only the "diskpart" command of WinPE3.0 (WinPE comes with Win7) supports the creation of VHD files, so please be sure to use Win7 core WinPE. The "diskpart.txt" in the text is a batch file that has been created. The default is on the D drive (the D drive must be in NTFS format and ensure that there is enough space to create the system file). Create a "Win7.vhd" file with a size of 10GB. . You can use "Notepad" to open "diskpart.txt" according to your own situation.

After obtaining the Win7 single file system through the above operation, you now have two choices:

1. If you are installing XP system now, and your memory is not very large, then You can choose to keep the existing XP system, and then you only need to configure Win7 single file system startup in WinPE to form a dual system of "traditional XP system + Win7 single file system";

2. If you install now Is XP or Win7 system, and your memory is relatively large, then you can choose to follow the method described in "Putting the system into memory and creating high-speed RAMOS", make an XP system running in memory, and then format the current The system is configured to start in WinPE and obtain the dual system of "Win7 single file system + XP single file system".

Of course, for the sake of insurance, it is recommended to keep the original system, reformat the original system and re-configure the boot after confirming that there is no problem with the single file system. Of course, the original system can also be retained, but the final result is the generation of three systems: the original system + XP single file system + Win7 single file system.

How to choose, depends on your own request.

The second step is to configure the single file system to start

to select the dual system of "Win7 single file system + XP single file system" as an example, first make the "winxp.img" Place it on the D drive, then start the WinPE system (you can use the Win7 CD directly), press "Shift+F10" to start the command prompt when the installation language interface appears, and then start the "Configure Single File System" provided in the archive. Enter the command for the command "document", format the C drive as prompted, and then copy the necessary files to the C drive.

After completing the above operation, use "bcdtool" to configure the startup of Win7 and XP single file systems.

The startup configuration of the Win7 single file system is also done in the command prompt environment. Enter "D:\\bcdtool" to start the "bcdtool" program, then click "Start Configuration → Open", select "C:\\boot\\bcd" and configure Win7 VHD to start. The steps are as follows:

Click the "Edit → New Vista Startup Project" button in the "bcdtool" menu bar, select the new project and double-click the "device" in the right pane to change it to "partition=P:" (that is, load Win7.vhd virtual The drive letter of the disk, if you enter the command in the "Configure Single File System Startup Command" document downloaded, the VHD is automatically loaded after the P drive, otherwise please modify it according to the actual situation), "description" (start menu display Change the name to "Windows 7 VHD" and "Osdevice" to "partition=P:".

We will configure the startup of the XP single file system.

Continue to click "Edit → New Real Mode Startup Item", change "description" to "Boot XP", and other settings use the default value. It should be noted that at this time, it is necessary to ensure that the C drive has "grldr.mbr", "menu.lst", "geldr" files, otherwise the XP single file system cannot be started.

Tip: In fact, whether it is XP or Win7, we only need "bootmgr" and "bcd" configuration files, you can easily configure their startup through "bcdtool", regardless of which system is installed. Partition.

Now restart the system, we can select "Windows 7 VHD" in the multi-boot menu to enter the Win7 single file system, select "Boot XP" to enter XP! This is done!

Simple Single-play dual system

Because the WinC single file system will automatically hide the original C drive, if you want to access the data in the original C drive, you need to run the disk management tool and assign a drive letter to it ( After starting the disk management, you can see that the system has added a new hard disk. This is the virtual hard disk we created.

Take the assigned drive letter as "N:" as an example. Now open the N drive. We can see that the entire dual system now has only 6 files plus 1 BOOT directory (as shown in Figure 4). Moreover, after the system has a problem, just copy the two files "winxp.img" and "Win7.vhd" after the installation, and then complete the backup operation. If you want to "reload", enter any system and use the backup file. Replace the file with the same name. The current dual system management and maintenance is much more convenient.

Tip: It is important to note that since all files in the Win7 single file system are packaged in a VHD file (the XP single file system is loaded in memory), when using these systems, Be careful not to save the downloaded data and documents on the current system disk, or move the data and files to other partitions before restarting, otherwise data and files will be lost.

Comment: The traditional dual system has a lot of troubles. First of all, it must be installed in different partitions, and then it must be installed in a certain order to be successful, and the usual backup and recovery operations are also very troublesome. However, the method of this article does not have such a problem at all - we can "install" multiple systems in the same partition, which not only effectively utilizes the hard disk space, but also facilitates the usual maintenance operations - copy and paste. Most importantly, you can move any system to any partition as needed, and then modify the startup configuration to complete. Don't reload, don't re-partition! If you are often entangled with system problems or partition issues, try the methods described in this article.