New Windows7 install; XP won't boot up

[Junkyardboy]

Hello my friends,

I have a very annoying problem with my operating system. Let me explain it to you, and hopefully you'll have a solution that will make my life less misserable. Before I start, Let me tell you, I've read the sticky threads and tried to do this myself, but I am failing, over and over.

I've got Windows XP professional loaded on my harddrive, and I recently decided to test out Windows 7. I loaded Windows 7 on the SAME partition that I had Windows XP on, and It loaded up no problem. Intially when I tried to reboot and start back up in Windows XP, there would be no option for me to boot up in Windows XP and it would automatically load into windows 7. I read somewhere that easyBCD will solve my solution. I managed to set it up so that when I boot my pc, it gives me an option now to boot up into windows xp, however i get an error saying invalid boot.ini C:\Windows.

Additional information that you might find useful, is during the instalation of windows 7, it moved the original Windows files into a Windows.old folder.

So here I am, asking for your help, as to why I can't I boot back up into windows xp. I've got a feeling that there is a solution to this problem somewhere on these forums, but I don't have time to go through each and every single of them to find the solution. I was told this place will have very quick and easy solutions.

Please, please help me.

Much appreciated,

Junkyardboy

[JustinW]

Hi Junkyardboy, welcome to NST

By installing Windows 7 to the same partition you most likely triggered an in-place upgrade. You'll need to try the steps here, though they have only been tested with Vista. If they fail to fix the boot you'll need to re-install XP. If you wish to try-out the beta, you'll need to create a seperate partition for Windows 7.

[Computer Guru]

They should work for 7 too.