Dual Boot - W XP 32 / W 7 64 ( it works)

According to MS help files on dual boot , they say you have to have the older OS installed first. If you install an older OS after the newer OS the old OS overwrites the boot sector and stops the new one from booting.
 
Now I have my new DAW up and running I'm re-purposing the old one. It has W 7 Ultimate 64. I want to install XP 32 bit to run some older software that won't run on W7. Office Front Page and STeem, the Atari ST emulator. 
Before I do something stupid is there anyone here that has gone dual boot in this manner. I hate to have to re install W7 this project is not that critical, It's just I love Steem, and I'm stuck with Front page for my web site cause I'm stuck....
 
I was thinking of pulling the W7 OS drive , putting in a blank drive, installing XP, then put the W7 drive back in? would that solve the boot sector issue? , and would I have dual boot option on start? 
 
I think I can still get XP 32 bit drivers for the Mobo as it's at least 5 years old. 

I have a couple of old boxes, but this is a science experiment, I posted on Toms Hardware and was given a link to this which explains how to do this and use a 3rd party utility to fix the boot loader issue. But it's not clear if using a second drive will work  
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/8790/dual-boot-your-pre-installed-windows-7-computer-with-xp/
 
 

This may help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/...arison_of_boot_loaders

I prefer to hide my OS partitions from each other.

Also hated dual booting, but weaned myself off the older stuff... But then I'm just a hobbyist

I have critical development software that won't run on W7 or W8, so I need an XP machine in order to stay in business. Past experience with virtual machines is that they weren't 100% emulations, but it's been ten years since I swore off them. Maybe time to give 'em another go. VirtualBox would sure be a convenient solution.

FWIW, I'd recommend keeping the "dual-boot" simple.  
IOW, I'd just install XP on a separate drive (not actually creating a dual-boot scenario).
Super easy with a trayless removable bay...
Far less chance of something going wrong...

Thanks for the input folks. I was planning on taking Jims route with a second drive anyhow. 
Dave I'm not sure how easy it is to boot from an external drive? I pretty sure a drive needs to be internal to install the OS ,,, but I'm certainly behind the times with this kinda stuff.. anyone? 
 
As I said this is my old DAW and might not ever get used for Sonar again. I'm keeping it alive as a back up. I have a few extra ( smaller)  monitors and tons of keyboards and mice kicking around.  I would hate to mess up the W7 drive as it took a few days to have everything working smoothly as you folks know all to well.
If something goes wrong with the new DAW ( I doubt it) I can be up and running in a few minutes , just swap over the interface.
My son built this one and it originally had dual boot with W7 & XP so I'm used to that menu popping up on boot up. At the time I had no use for XP on my DAW.  I have since re built with just W7 only so this was all about this boot sector warning from MS. Seems like it is easy to overcome. 
 
Anyhow, I'm just going to go ahead and use the second internal drive , no animals will be harmed in this action..
I looked into the virtual machine and I think I like the dual boot option better.  
 
 

So I did the nasty deed and it works like a charm. 
I pulled the SATA conector to C drive, told the bios to boot from CD
Installed W XP SP 3 32 bit. 
Shut down,  re connected W7 C drive,  change bios back to boot from SATA 0
When W7 opened I installed and ran the EasyBCD utility and it allowed me to add "E" drive Windows XP to the boot loader. You can choose which OS is your default and the time out for choosing.  
So I can now boot into either system without issue. 
All drives are available on both. 
 
So there you go. It works, I see nothing wrong with dual boot. It only adds a few seconds to normal boot sequence, big deal. 
Notes: 
One thing I did learn- Gigabytes web site sucks for older Mobo's. Half the drivers, even though they were correct, didn't work. And the sites layout is real iffy on what the heck your getting.  I had better luck going to Realtech for my LAN driver' It was a good thing I could open W7 and see what was in there.  Only the chipset drivers seemed to run properly thank goodness.
My Video is a Nvida EN7600 GS Silent card,
For the Audio I put my old Card Deluxe ASIO PCI card back in. They were made for Radio and have good specs. 2 x 1/4 " balanced TRS input and output Plus SPDIF too. 
Not sure what windows updates will still be available, no biggy, not using it for on line anyhow.