Tweak NO. 4 : Windows 7 and XP dual boot on Dell XPS M1530

04Sep09

It’s some time since my post about Fedora & Vista dual boot using the Dell Media Direct button and I’ve realized that I don’t use linux at all.

It’s not that I don’t like to – I would love to switch to another more customizable system, but I can’t. Windows binded me with too many applications, 3dsmax, visual studio, Unity- just to name a few and it’s enough to make me stay.

It’s not that hard to setup this dual boot, but one false step can lead you to broking the Master Boot Record and data loss. This guide should protect you from such mistakes, however I still do not take any responsibility for the damage that can possibly be done 😛

1. Get needed tools.

• Dell Media Direct CD
• MBRWiz http://mbrwizard.com/index.php
• GParted http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php [you’ll probably don’t really need this tool since in most cases you can calculate the drive index from the data given by MBRWiz, however if you want to get really sure then download it and burn to a cd]

2. Get rid of the media direct partition (not really needed, but why to keep it? 🙂 )

3. Partition your HDD in some wise way, like: partition1 – Windows XP , partition2 – Windows 7, partition 3 (extended) – data

4.  Install Windows 7 to the desired partition

5. Run MBRWiz, hide the Windows 7 partition and make the Windows XP partition active, look here for examples how to do that: http://mbrwizard.com/examples.php

6. Install Windows XP to the desired (active) partition

7. Unhide Windows 7 partition

8. If you’ve downloaded GParted then run it and note the partition indexes of Windows 7 and XP (numbers shown after …\sda). If you didn’t download it and you’d like to use a trick then probably you’ll get it working by adding 1 to the indexes shown by MBRWiz – note them somewhere

9. Insert the Dell Media Direct CD, while being on Windows XP and using command line navigate to your CD drive and write: rmbr DELL X Y where X is the index to the system partition which you’d like to run when pressing the regular power button and Y is the index to the system partition which you’d like to run when pressing the Media Direct button

That’s all, enjoy your dual boot dell laptop.

There’s also a way to sync the application data between those two systems so you don’t have to install the applications twice, but I’ll either refer to my friend article when he’ll write it or write it myself someday.

Filed under: Dell XPS M1530, Tips, Tweaks   |  12 Comments
Tags: 7, boot, dell, dual, m1530, setup, tweak, windows, xp, xps