Installing windows 7 without format?

[rabbidrabbit]

So my machine dies and toasts xp.  I have a win7 Ultimate dvd and want to install on the existing drive without overwriting everything.  I have it backed up remotely but don't want to wait forever to recover the data.  Ideally, I would like to install win 7 as dual boot on a drive with a non booting XP on it without formatting the drive or otherwise losing data.  After the install I'll just make sure I have everything backed up locally and then do a fresh install of win7 and then restore bookmarks etc.  Any good way to do this?  I have not found anything yet.  Most all upgrades seem to require booting xp first.

[trigger2]

If you just want to preserve your files, if your HD is large enough, just install it on a second partition. Remember though, you'll need your drivers for whatever LAN Card you have, even if it's onboard, otherwise you'll have no internet. I suggest doing what I do, have your graphics drivers and internet drivers stored on a flashdrive.

[Bradman]

More then likely XP is taking up the entire HD which means you need to shrink the size of the partition. The best way to accomplish this is to use GParted(http://gparted.sourceforge.net).

[TheZohan]

i have my windows 7 and WINXP on seperate drives. just put in windows 7 dvd and pointed it to my blank drive and when it installed it put the option in my boot menu older windows and windows 7 i can choose to boot to windows 7 or my original XP Harddrive. easy peezy lemon squeezey