I’ve been running Windows 7 RC from a separate disk drive on my XP home machine since the RC came out, using the BIOS to boot into either XP or Win7. It has been working very well, so I purchased a 7 upgrade from XP license from Amazon about a month ago. But I have a lot of stuff on my Windows XP install that I can’t possibly test it all for compatibility with Windows 7. I want to keep the fully functional XP install indefinitely in case I need to run some incompatible software or retrieve some random settings/custom configuration files.
Paul Thurott’s Windows Super Site Review suggests this is possible. If I proceed with the upgrade to Windows 7, will I later encounter problems booting into XP? For example will the XP install on separate hard disk all of a sudden start asking for activation, etc.? How have previous Windows upgrades been handled?
Mods: I’m asking about retaining the same legal install of XP on the same machine, not trying to upgrade and get an XP license for free on another machine.