Windows 7 problem

Background:

I currently have XP and 7 dual booted on my computer. XP is on harddrive 1 partition 1, 7 is on partition 2. I set my drives up in XP so that XP is C, 7 is D, Program Files are E, and Storage is F. In 7 it is the same except XP and 7 are switched. I also changed the location of the Program Files (x86) folder to E:/Program Files in the windows 7 registry (open registry, go to edit - find and then type programfilesdir to find it). I changed everything that mentioned program files to that folder and made a Program Files (x64) folder in E and changed the values in the registry to that as well. In XP it is pointed to the same location as well.

Here comes the problem:

When I go to copy the XP start menu to 7, all the shortcuts point to Program Files (x64) now for some reason and they all start in C:\Program Files. Weird huh? I booted back in XP and the shortcuts are fine. I guess the Windows 7 behavior towards shortcuts are messed up or something. The only remedy I could figure out was to manually edit them and this time just edit it as %programfiles% to get them to work.

Anyone have any viable solutions? Like a mass shortcut editor or maybe I'm just doing something wrong in the registry.

Edit: My solution was to just have a program files and a program files (x86) folder. I set the registry entries back to how they were except with the drive letters being changed. Even though all my programs are x86, they are in the regular program files folder and the shortcuts work fine. I'm guessing if I install anything else they are going in the x86 folder.

I'll probably write up a dual booting guide soon once I got 7 working to my liking.

jus throwing this out there but try just having 1 OS on your computer

Well you obviously found your answer :P

What the Sister of Battle said.

I'd have only 1 OS but just incase one of my VNs don't work then I can fall back to XP. So far I've been able to figure out solutions for any of my problems. I haven't had to reinstall that much software and I haven't had to reconfigure that much either by copying over %appdata% from XP to 7. Also a few registry tweaks by having some programs using the Wow6432Node fixed any problems they had running (This made SexyBeach 3 work again =D).

Wait, what? If you're running 64bit of any Windows, the default Program Files folder is for 64bit programs, while the (x86) folder is for 32bit programs. Why would you want to change that, and more importantly, why would you point one OS to another OS's partition?

Disc1(75GB): Partition1: XP Partition2: 7
Disc2(150GB): Program Files
Disc3(1.5TB): Storage (documents, music, videos, pictures)

Originally ran 32bit XP and had it set up similarly. Had a nlited slipstream as well as backups of the registry and the appdata folder on the Program Files drive so if the OS fails then I can just run the slipstream then merge the registry and I'm back in business. Keeping XP in case I stumble across something that doesn't work, which I haven't found anything yet. And it doesn't really matter where you install your programs to as long as the registry entries point to it correctly. My problem now is that even though I changed the registry default install path to E:\Program Files it still wants to put it in C:\ for some reason. Also, XP is only taking up 5 gigs of space - its a good backup in case I screw something up.

I think most users here including me aren't that skilled enough with computers to mess with things like registry entries with confidence that we won't mess things up. Thus the recommendations for only one OS b/c it simplifies logistics tremendously.

However, I long for the day that Microsoft gets rid of registries or emulate Mac OS in this aspect b/c registries mess up too often by accident and from the layman point of view just needlessly complicate things.

You know Windows 7 has Windows XP emulation mode...

Only if your CPU and motherboard support hardware virtualization technology which mine doesn't. Pretty much means you need a core i5 or better. I plan on upgrading my comp with a i7 920 once I get situated in my new place.

Also I figured out my problem with it installing in the wrong spot. Apparently in 64 bit versions there are 2 places where you have to change a set of keys - the usual spot and in the wow6432node.

Hmm from looking at Intel's site Core 2 Duo chips seem to support vitalisation.