amazing, baffling, and totally abstruse

power up

bootup 1.jpg
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if you press 'esc' to get the boot menu, you'll have these options. however, you cannot boot from the hard drives - either of them. you can not fix this. you'll get a blinking cursor if you select the second hdd, and a cyclic reboot if you select the first hdd.

bootup 2.jpg
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if, from power up, you don't press 'esc', you'll come to this screen. i have not been able to find this screen in any boot utility. i have not figured out how to edit it, or if i did once, i lost it.
i need to add win 7 to this menu, but i haven't been able to figure out how to do it, so that my options look like:
1. win 7
2. win xp x64
3. win xp x32

bootup 3.jpg
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i can boot into xp fine (the second option from the previous boot menu). i can boot into xp x64 fine. but there isn't any way for me to boot into win 7

bootup 5.jpg
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there are several reasons that i am hanging on to xp; my memory is limited. this build is going to choke on newer versions of windows. still, there is a win 7 installation on drive v:, as evidenced by the upcoming screen shots ...

bootup 6.jpg
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here's the conundrum: easybcd finds the win 7 partition, but it isn't finding the win xp partition. the contrapositive of the problem i am trying to fix.
as a matter of fact, i have tried other boot software, and have even fixed this problem from the win 7 install dvd. but once you power cycle, you're back to the previous options. nothing will change. you see easybdc find the win 7 boot, you see the partition from the partition table, but no boot option. note that now, win xp is the operating system that is doing the hide and seek

easybcd 1_view settings_overview.JPGeasybcd 2_view settings_detailed.JPG
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the boot options that you saw on bootup are not here. and the win 7 option that you see here is not on the boot menu. as a matter of fact, we are looking at two completely different boot menus, one of which is loading, and this one, which is not loading

easybcd 3_edit boot menu.JPG
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the location of win 7 is listed under xp x32 as "v:", however, when booting win 7, the second hdd, the partition is called "c:"

easybcd 4_advanced settings.JPG
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so here we see what is going on: the options you see here are exactly those presented originally on bootup. drive 0 partition 2 contains the win 7 installation, and drive 1 partition 1 contains the xp x32 partition

easybcd 5_deployment.JPG

i am looking for a way to add win 7 to my boot menu, but i can't figure out how. any suggestions ?
 
The boot menu you are seeing is from NTLDR on XP.
You cannot add W7 to that as an option. It's incapable of booting any Windows newer than itself.
You must add XP entries to W7's bootbgr's BCD.
The problem seems to be that your OEM's BIOS will not allow switching boot disks.
I wasn't aware that this applied to HP, though it has long been an annoying feature of Dell's product line.
The only way I know of circumventing it is physically to switch cables between the HDDs so that the BIOS will boot from the W7 drive by default.
If you wanted only to boot one XP from W7 you could let EasyBCD auto-detect and configure for you, but adding two versions of XP requires use of Neosmart's customized version of NTLDR, EasyLDR.
Read all about it here
Windows XP
 
If you currently go through two boot menus (select XP from W7 bootmgr, then choose which XP from NTLDR), you can simplify to a single menu with both XPs listed in bootmgr's menu by using the link in my previous post.
 
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