A rather unique problem

lushen124

Member
First of all, I'd like to thank the people at NeoSmart for EasyBCD, because it made my life quadbooting 4 unique OSes REALLY easy.

I think it'd be easier if I explained my situation, so here goes.

Originally, I had a quadboot system on three hard drives, we'll call them A, B, and C. On hard drive A, I had Windows XP installed running next to Ubuntu using Wubi. I tried out the Windows 7 Beta on drive B. For some reason or other, when I installed it, the system files wound up on B as expected, but I believe the boot information ended up on A, because booting from B results in an "Error loading OS" on boot, while booting from A brings up Windows 7's bootloader. Lastly, I managed to use one of my other hard drives (a slowly dying drive for experimentation) and put OS X on it and got that to show up in XP's boot, which subsequently showed up in Windows 7's bootloader by using the CHAIN0 method in XP's boot.ini file.

All of the above worked fine.

Since I came into posession of a new hard drive, I decided to completely start over my OSes and consolidate my OSes all onto 1 drive instead of 3, and subsequently replacing drive C, the dying drive. So here's what I did.

I installed Windows XP on the first of 4 partitions of my new drive, which we'll call D. Following a successful Windows XP installation, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on the second partition of the drive. This leaves me with the Vista bootloader. After that I installed Mac OS X on the third partition of the drive and used EasyBCD to place the Darwin bootloader into the boot menu. Finally, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on the remaining unallocated space on the drive and used EasyBCD to add the GRUB bootloader to Vista's bootloader.

This much works fine.

Now, I decided not to format my old drives yet since drive B (with Windows 7) had data files with it and drive A (with Windows XP) had a lot of applications installed which I need for school. I decided to add the two old OSes to the menu so that I could boot without going into the BIOS everytime and changing the default boot device. Adding Windows 7 was straightforward, and within minutes I was able to load Windows 7 (albeit with a Windows Vista loading screen) from my new drive. (In this case, I had to point EasyBCD to drive B, which held the system files for Windows 7 instead of drive A, holding the bootloader for Windows 7).

So far, the boot menu looks like this:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta

The old Windows XP, however, is where the problem is. I use EasyBCD to add a Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 entry to the list from Add/Remove Entries. Since the drive letter is greyed out for this option, I then went to the change settings and edited the drive for this new entry to point to the drive A, whose drive letter is given by Windows Vista (in this case, G: ). I go to restart it, and the bootloader shows the options:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
6. Old Microsoft Windows XP

...which seems right, but selecting choice 6 leads to the same place as choice 1. So instead of my old Windows XP (on drive A) loading, the new Windows XP (on drive D) loads.

So, in short, here is my problem:

I have two separate partitions with Windows XP installed. The existing option in Vista's bootloader was placed there by Vista when I installed Vista after the second Windows XP. I tried to use EasyBCD to insert another option for Windows XP which led back to the first Windows XP. But the new option also leads to the second Windows XP:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional (This leads to the NEW Windows XP)
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
6. Old Microsoft Windows XP (SHOULD lead to OLD Windows XP, but leads to NEW Windows XP)


Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
First of all, I'd like to thank the people at NeoSmart for EasyBCD, because it made my life quadbooting 4 unique OSes REALLY easy.

I think it'd be easier if I explained my situation, so here goes.

Originally, I had a quadboot system on three hard drives, we'll call them A, B, and C. On hard drive A, I had Windows XP installed running next to Ubuntu using Wubi. I tried out the Windows 7 Beta on drive B. For some reason or other, when I installed it, the system files wound up on B as expected, but I believe the boot information ended up on A, because booting from B results in an "Error loading OS" on boot, while booting from A brings up Windows 7's bootloader. Lastly, I managed to use one of my other hard drives (a slowly dying drive for experimentation) and put OS X on it and got that to show up in XP's boot, which subsequently showed up in Windows 7's bootloader by using the CHAIN0 method in XP's boot.ini file.
Hi lushen, welcome to NST.
Sounds like your XP drive was first in the boot sequence in the BIOS at time of install of Win 7...:wink: That must be why it put its boot files on your XP drive.
All of the above worked fine.

Since I came into posession of a new hard drive, I decided to completely start over my OSes and consolidate my OSes all onto 1 drive instead of 3, and subsequently replacing drive C, the dying drive. So here's what I did.

I installed Windows XP on the first of 4 partitions of my new drive, which we'll call D. Following a successful Windows XP installation, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on the second partition of the drive. This leaves me with the Vista bootloader. After that I installed Mac OS X on the third partition of the drive and used EasyBCD to place the Darwin bootloader into the boot menu. Finally, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on the remaining unallocated space on the drive and used EasyBCD to add the GRUB bootloader to Vista's bootloader.

This much works fine.

Now, I decided not to format my old drives yet since drive B (with Windows 7) had data files with it and drive A (with Windows XP) had a lot of applications installed which I need for school. I decided to add the two old OSes to the menu so that I could boot without going into the BIOS everytime and changing the default boot device. Adding Windows 7 was straightforward, and within minutes I was able to load Windows 7 (albeit with a Windows Vista loading screen) from my new drive. (In this case, I had to point EasyBCD to drive B, which held the system files for Windows 7 instead of drive A, holding the bootloader for Windows 7).

So far, the boot menu looks like this:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta

The old Windows XP, however, is where the problem is. I use EasyBCD to add a Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 entry to the list from Add/Remove Entries. Since the drive letter is greyed out for this option, I then went to the change settings and edited the drive for this new entry to point to the drive A, whose drive letter is given by Windows Vista (in this case, G: ). I go to restart it, and the bootloader shows the options:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
6. Old Microsoft Windows XP

...which seems right, but selecting choice 6 leads to the same place as choice 1. So instead of my old Windows XP (on drive A) loading, the new Windows XP (on drive D) loads.

So, in short, here is my problem:

I have two separate partitions with Windows XP installed. The existing option in Vista's bootloader was placed there by Vista when I installed Vista after the second Windows XP. I tried to use EasyBCD to insert another option for Windows XP which led back to the first Windows XP. But the new option also leads to the second Windows XP:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional (This leads to the NEW Windows XP)
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
6. Old Microsoft Windows XP (SHOULD lead to OLD Windows XP, but leads to NEW Windows XP)


Any help would be greatly appreciated.
A problem with XP not booting? No problem. :smile:Use the latest beta version of EasyBCD to add a new entry for XP, and hit Yes when you get to the Prompt asking you if you want it to automatically configure boot.ini for you. If need be, copy the "ntldr" and "ntdetect.com" file into the partition that is "system" as shown in Disk Management.
Now reboot and test, and it should work. :wink:

Cheers,

Jake
 
You can't add a second XP entry to the BCD Lush.
The way it works is that the BCD chainloads NTLDR when you select XP, and uses the NTLDR in the same partition as Vista's bootmgr. To boot an alternative XP you must add a second XP option to the boot.ini file (also the one in the same partition root as Vista's bootmgr), with a different rdisk and partition combination appropriate for the 2nd XP installation.
 
Ah, ok.

So I should add the entry to the existing Windows XP's boot.ini file to have the option. The disks and rdisks numbers don't change between boots, do they? I should logically be able to copy the old Windows XP's boot.ini entry into the new boot.ini, and it should boot, right?

I'll check this out. Thanks for the quick reply.
 
Yep, unless your disk setup changes or you boot from another device...

Don't know if EasyBCD 2.0's auto-config can work for mutiple entries, but if you're having problems give it a go.
 
Ok, so I hit a bit of a snag here.

I opened up the two boot.ini files to check it out, but there's a little wrinkle with the above solution of copying the boot.ini entry from the old to the new.

The Old boot.ini file has this entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT

The New boot.ini file has this entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

As far as I can tell, the disk and rdisk values are the same, so the original idea of copying one into the other is out. I need to find out the disk and rdisk values for the old partition under the new XP's numbering system. I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

Any suggestions?
 
As far as I can tell, the disk and rdisk values are the same, so the original idea of copying one into the other is out. I need to find out the disk and rdisk values for the old partition under the new XP's numbering system. I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

Any suggestions?

That is where the autoconfig (found at Tools>Auto configure boot.ini) in 2.0 comes in handy. :brows:

Cheers,

Jake
 
Yes, but if you need to procced fyi, the disk value always stays 0 and rdisk's value is what will need to be adjusted depending on how many hard drives you got in the system.
 
The 1st drive in the BIOS boot sequence will be rdisk(0) in boot.ini.
The second XP system you're trying to boot is on a different HDD so will be rdisk(1) (If that's the only other HDD)
Just duplicate the XP line in the OS section of the boot.ini on your "system" partition, change rdisk to 1 in the duplicated line, and you should be set to go. (it's rdisk 0 in the boot.ini on its own disk because that was the correct number when that HDD was first in the boot sequence, as it used to be. Now it's not the booted disk any more the active boot.ini must reflect where to find it.)
 
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Ah ok.

Time to test out numbers, because I've got 5 drives in my computer. At least I know it's partition 1, so there's only 4 numbers to test.

Thanks a lot.
 
I don't know of the auto-config module in EasyBCD, so I can't say.

I did, however, manage to get the other Windows XP visible by adding it to the New Windows XP's boot.ini file. So, what I ultimately ended up with was:

Vista's Bootloader:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
3. Mac OS X Leopard
4. Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
5. Microsoft Windows 7 Beta

Selecting the first option brings up:

Windows XP Bootloader (NTLDR)

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2. Old Microsoft Windows XP

where I added the new entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\windows="Old Microsoft Windows XP" /FASTDETECT

Works like a charm.

Thanks a bunch to everybody here.
 
What CG meant is the new auto-config boot.ini feature added to the EasyBCD 2.0 Beta useable from the Tools menu. I was curious myself whether or not it would work in your case where you got/want multiple entries for more than one XP install when you get to ntldr (second menu). Guess we'll never know....

Anyway, glad you got it all sorted out :smile:
 
I can always try it out if you guys are curious. Since I've already found my fix, nothing wrong with a little experimentation. I'll post back my results with the auto config then.
 
Please do! :smile:

Just tools | auto-configure

And see if the boot.ini file it creates has both entries working :smile:

Thanks man!
 
Thanks a lot lushen for volunteering, a lot of us only got one instance of XP on our machines to test with and can't try it out.
 
Well, I tried it, but I have reason to believe that it didn't work, namely that the boot.ini file now looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP on C:\" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP on C:\" /fastdetect
If there's any other info you need, just reply back.

Also, sorry for the late reply. I've been busy with school.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, I was using build 60 of the beta, assuming the beta is the latest version.
 
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You're right - definitely won't work.

Let me get back to you on this one, and thanks for your help.
 
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