[asamir00]

Hi,
in a laptop "Compaq presario CQ61 303SV"
I installed Win XP 32 on drive C - then Vista 32 on Drive D - then Win7 32 on Drive E (in this order).
By click "My computer" in Windows XP or Vista , the 3 drives appear (C D E) ,
but in Win 7 By click "My computer" the drives of Vista and Win 7 appear only , the one of XP is unavailable.
At the same time , from Win7 I opened "My computer ... Manage ---- Disk manager" all drives are available (C D E )

please help me to let XP drive be available in My Computer

Thanks

[saikee]

Your Xp is among one of the C,D E drives!

Once booted Win7 takes the "C" position same as Vista if you haven't found this out yet!

[asamir00]

do you mean that I must install XP in another drive different than C ?

[saikee]

No

Xp sticks to the drive letter it was installed.

Later versions of Windows Vista and Win7 change it by claiming the "c" drive status when it is booted.

You can only operate one system at a time. While operating in Win7 your Xp partition appears just like a normal data-only NTFS partition.You should not be able to run its programs but able to access its files. Therefore which drive letter Xp partition ending up with is immaterial to your operation.

If you want Xp available while running Win7 you have to use vitual machine with which you install Win7 as a "host" and "xp" as a guest. For that you need a management layer software to manage the virtual machines.

[DaveA]

saikee,
I beta tested Windows 7 on my test machine on the "D" drive and it was always showing it was on the D drive. When running Windows 7, I could access any file I wanted to on the C drive which has XP on it.

asamir00 does not want to run XP within Windows 7 just wants to access the drive to get to some of the files.

[asamir00]

"asamir00 does not want to run XP within Windows 7 just wants to access the drive to get to some of the files."
Thank you DaveA .... That is what I mean exactly.... this is my problem

[saikee]

May be I misunderstood the question.

It now appears the Xp partition is indeed show up in disk management of Win7 but Win7 refuse to mount it. The only reason I could think of is the user name for Xp is different to the user name in Win7 making Win7 thinking the user of Win7 has no access right to the Xp partition. Would this be the case?

Must admit this is new to me as I have Xp, Win2k, Vista all mounted in my Win7.


My 4 MS Windows are booted from a Dos partition I place in the first primary. Xp, Win2k, Vista and Xp are in 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th partitions.

[asamir00]

Thanks God
It is solved
in partition manager of Win7 I noticed that Win XP partition is available but WITHOUT DRIVE LETTER...
I added a drive letter for it (G) .... then it appears in My Computer.....!!
Many Thanks for you all and for sincer efforts.