XP /W7 dual boot beware - ICH5R/82801ER (875 chipset)

[Ghastly]

Just want to throw this out there.   To date I've not heard of any issues whatsoever with dual-booting Windows 7 and XP, but I've found a situation that just doesn't work.

The older ICH5R/82801ER controller is part of the i875P chipset that is the basis to our standard workstation at work, and was the chipset the Abit IC7 that is in my general system at home (it was my game system 2 generations ago) is based upon.

And it will not, will not, dual boot XP and Windows 7 on the IC7 motherboard.  I've mucked about with it for almost 2 weeks, including breaking the the mirrored RAID array and moving the XP installation to standalone non-mirrored drive, and regardless, after Windows 7 is installed the XP installation blue screens upon boot.  The XP installation is bootable in safe mode, but normal Windows mode is a no go - and no amount of working with it fixes it, excluding the "full wipe of the drive and reimage the original partitions back onto it" that is sometime required to fix faulty RAID metadata with this controller.

This controller has given me grief in the past because the BIOS and driver both are easily confused if anything unexpected is found in the RAID metadata area, and I'm presuming that the Windows 7 installation is putting something there that the XP driver isn't kosher with (even though they both are using the same driver version), but the bottom line is if you plan to dual boot the older controllers that support RAID, A few extra precautions to preserve your installation might be well worth taking - just in case.

What I did not try was installing Windows 7 to a different drive in the same system.  This is because instead of doing that, I'd disconnect the XP drive, install Win 7 to it's own drive, and then reconnect the older XP drive and switch the boot drive in BIOS to control which OS to boot.

But since the 82801ER only supports 2 drives and I don't want to give up the ability to periodically mirror the drive to a backup drive, I'll probably just forego Windows 7 until such time as the XP installation needs rebuilt or some other reason comes up.

<S>

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Just want to throw this out there.   To date I've not heard of any issues whatsoever with dual-booting Windows 7 and XP, but I've found a situation that just doesn't work.

The older ICH5R/82801ER controller is part of the i875P chipset that is the basis to our standard workstation at work, and was the chipset the Abit IC7 that is in my general system at home (it was my game system 2 generations ago) is based upon.

And it will not, will not, dual boot XP and Windows 7 on the IC7 motherboard.  I've mucked about with it for almost 2 weeks, including breaking the the mirrored RAID array and moving the XP installation to standalone non-mirrored drive, and regardless, after Windows 7 is installed the XP installation blue screens upon boot.  The XP installation is bootable in safe mode, but normal Windows mode is a no go - and no amount of working with it fixes it, excluding the "full wipe of the drive and reimage the original partitions back onto it" that is sometime required to fix faulty RAID metadata with this controller.

This controller has given me grief in the past because the BIOS and driver both are easily confused if anything unexpected is found in the RAID metadata area, and I'm presuming that the Windows 7 installation is putting something there that the XP driver isn't kosher with (even though they both are using the same driver version), but the bottom line is if you plan to dual boot the older controllers that support RAID, A few extra precautions to preserve your installation might be well worth taking - just in case.

What I did not try was installing Windows 7 to a different drive in the same system.  This is because instead of doing that, I'd disconnect the XP drive, install Win 7 to it's own drive, and then reconnect the older XP drive and switch the boot drive in BIOS to control which OS to boot.

But since the 82801ER only supports 2 drives and I don't want to give up the ability to periodically mirror the drive to a backup drive, I'll probably just forego Windows 7 until such time as the XP installation needs rebuilt or some other reason comes up.

<S>

That'll teach you to stay away from integrated fake-raid abominations

[Ghastly]

I mention it because even with the RAID disabled in BIOS and XP on single non-raided drive, it still won't boot XP after Win 7 is installed. That, and I bet that there are still a significant number of i875P based systems still in use.

I'd wondered why other, older chipsets were natively supported by the Windows 7 installation DVD but this one required that you hunt up an F6 disk.  Now I have a glimmer of an idea why.   

Not the end of the world by any means - it's something you can circumvent I'm sure with a PCI based controller.  But it's also not unlikely for someone with less experience to get stuck, too - the chipset only supports 2 SATA drives, which limits many of your options.   And it did seem to run Windows 7 just fine although I didn't get very far beyond "simply installed."

<S>

[Easyscor]

Thanks for the heads up. I too have that MB, and it's still serving me well.

[Tinribs]

Just installed 7 and xp on seperate drives on my system and had exactly the same problem,accessing the hdd with 7 through the bios no problem but xp blue screened everytime.
I messed around with all sorts of stuff trying to find a cure and in the end it seems just switching sata ports around has done the trick as for why I got no idea.

[Ghastly]

Tinribs, out of curiosity do you know what motherboard was installed in the system that had a similar problem?

<S>

[katanaso]

What Stop message are you receiving?  0x0000007B?

mir

[Ghastly]

Nope, it's my old friend 0x0000008E. 

<S>

[Tinribs]

Tinribs, out of curiosity do you know what motherboard was installed in the system that had a similar problem?

<S>

Asus p5n-t deluxe 780i all the latest bios chipset drivers etc etc etc.good luck.

[Ghastly]

Commmmpleeetely different everything about the motherboard - not even an Intel (anything) chipset.  However, the controller is RAID capable, for whatever that's worth.

This seems likely to bode badly for suggesting dual boot solutions as a transition tool when folks aren't quite ready to quit XP entirely.
<S>

[TequilaChaser]

Heya Ghastly,

just a thought, but have you tried using any programs similar or like the HDD Manager I use and have used on older systems inthe past?

This is the newest version I have right now: ( it is not free, but their are some free prog's out there )
Paragon HDD Manager™ 2009 Pro

this is what I used on my first WinXP pro/win 7 Ult 64 bit dual boot setup, I did not go with the built in microsoft dual boot setup Windows has in it.....

[Ghastly]

Heya Ghastly,

just a thought, but have you tried using any programs similar or like the HDD Manager I use and have used on older systems inthe past?

This is the newest version I have right now: ( it is not free, but their are some free prog's out there )
Paragon HDD Manager™ 2009 Pro

this is what I used on my first WinXP pro/win 7 Ult 64 bit dual boot setup, I did not go with the built in microsoft dual boot setup Windows has in it.....

Hmmm.  I may look into it.  In the past, I've mostly used Grub if I wanted to set up boot logic that the native Windows software didn't allow. But since the XP installation boots all the way to the point where Windows switches modes after the W7 installation - and will still boot normally into safe mode - I honestly didn't think of it as a partitioning/boot loader issue. 

[katanaso]

Nope, it's my old friend 0x0000008E. 

<S>

Did you see this, where the guy had the same issue and solved i:

After hours of searching (=_=), I fixed my problem: Had to use the windows xp recovery disc and entered:
bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot
fixmbr

http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/w7-xp-dual-boot-bsod-stop-0x0000008e/184424.html

[Ghastly]

No, I hadn't!!!  And that is EXACTLY the BSOD I was getting.  Wifey is away, I may try again this weekend, just to see. 

Thank you Katanaso!

<S>

[katanaso]

Hope it works for you!

I would've run into the exact same problem in the future too.


mir