Z68 Extreme7 - Dual booting WinXP Pro and Windows 7

[Pablos]

A little while ago, having installed Windows 7, I decided that due to the fact that some software that I liked isn't supported in Win7 and doesn't work in XP mode within Win7, that I'll try and dual boot.

I can't remember all the issues but it didn't go too well. I remember in XP, the USB ports weren't working, the network adapters weren't working, I think my Blu Ray writer wasn't recognised and some other problems I can't remember.

IIRC I came to a halt as some of the XP drivers on the download page for my board, either I couldn't install them or they didn't work.

Are there any BIOS settings that need to be set that I can successfully use XP and Win7 in a dual boot situation?

Sorry if things are a little vague but it was a while back and rather than try again and document all the issues, I thought I'd ask if there were any things I need to be aware of before giving it a go again. (Next time, I'm saving my Win7 installation as an image, formatting the SSD, installing XP and putting the Win7 image back on - hopefully to achieve a successful dual boot situation).

Here's my system spec:

Intel 2600k
Asrock Z68 Extreme7 board
16GB RAM
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
WD Storage drives
Pioneer BDR-206D Blu-Ray writer
Corsair AX1200
Radeon HD5450 VGA card (soon to be upgraded)

[parsec]

Re: Z68 Extreme7 - Dual booting WinXP Pro and Windows 7

IMO, XP is just to old to work with all current hardware. Your board is on the dividing line between no support and supporting XP. With the latest Intel Haswell systems, the drivers support for the "older" OSes only go down to Windows 7, that is the oldest you can use.

The USB 3.0 and network driver version for XP and Windows 7 are the same version, so any incompatibility may be purely an XP thing. An example of which is no native AHCI mode support from XP, and no TRIM support for your SSD. You better use the Magician software with it for the manual TRIM feature, with XP.

No TRIM is a show stopper for me with XP.

I know of no specific XP settings in the BIOS of boards I use, but I don't have your board. Blue Ray support in XP? When it still wants a floppy to load drivers?