Dual Boot Win XP & Win 2000

Currently have dual boot Win XP on C & D drives. D drive Win XP was to test a few programs.

Now I want to install Win 2000 on the D drive but booting from the Win 2000 CD doesn't give me an option to install on the D drive or any drive. The usual box listing drives is empty.

I guess my question is can Win 2000 be installed if it's an older OS than Win XP?

 

To have things work properly, you need to have 2K installed first (in fact, for any multi-boot of M$ stuff, start with the oldest OS and work your way thru newer to newest).

One serious issue with 2K and XP is the OS version. 2K runs NT5 and doesn't understand the XP NT5.1 unless XP was installed last and will make some modifications to the 2K install so it can deal with the newer OS.

You could probably wipe out the XP load on D: completely and unformat the disk and have 2K recognize a space it could format and load into but I'm not at all sure it would work properly. And you certainly wouldn't have a good dual-boot system that way.

 

Format C:
Install Win 2K on C:
When that is finished, boot into Win 2K, insert your XP disk in and proceed to install XP in full on D:.
You may have to allow XP to do a format of D: before it will install.

This should automatically give you an option on startup to boot to either OS with the XP set as default but that can then be changed from XP.

 

Thanks to all. I'll let you know if I have any problems.