Xp wont start.

joemardo1

Member
Hello folks,

I have 2 drives in my computer with different partitions on each, I have 3 installs of windows 7 plus xp all in different partitions on the one drive. (will probably add windows 10 sooner or later as well)

Xp used to boot (was the active drive) but then I changed one of the windows 7 partitions to be active (since I don't use xp much) and I am now taken to the windows xp repair screen when trying to boot into it xp. All windows 7 installations boot normally.

The usual 1, 2 and 3 options about inserting XP disk with the following files corrupt or missing.
file\NST\autoneogrub.MBR and oxc000000f.

1 I see that in EasyBCD BCD Deployment, there is an option to install the windows xp bootloader to the MBR, should I do this to solve the xp not booting problem and it wont conflict with any of other window 7 installations booting?

2 Am I correct in thinking that since I have set one of the window 7 to be active (and the drive gets priority in the bios) that in effect the MBR is now on my windows 7 active drive?

3 I have used easyBCD to copy the boot records (MBR) to other drives even a few external drives as a backup measure just in case the MBR gets damaged so I could give the other drives priority in the bios and windows would start. Is this a workable wise precaution since I understand it EasyBCD never deletes anything when asked to do the above, it just copies things over?

Many thanks again, its a brilliant program.
Joe
 
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Microsoft puts all the boot files in the "active" partition.
You can't just move the active flag without breaking the boot.
Put the original XP partition back as active and when the boot is working again, follow this
https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/basics/changing-the-boot-partition/
If you wan't to boot from somewhere else.


OK ignore the above, I just inferred from your OP that you've used that.
The EasyBCD function mentioned changes the active flag for you.
Just make sure you tell it to copy stuff to the one you want.

The MBR doesn't move. It's the MBR partition table which contains the "active" flag (one bit) which tells the MBR IPL where to go next in its boot chain. EasyBCD will have made sure that the PBR and all necessary files are there to be found.

Don't go using "write MBR". That's for something completely different. Will undo everything else you do.
 
Last edited:
Microsoft puts all the boot files in the "active" partition.
You can't just move the active flag without breaking the boot.
Put the original XP partition back as active and when the boot is working again, follow this
https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/basics/changing-the-boot-partition/
If you wan't to boot from somewhere else.


OK ignore the above, I just inferred from your OP that you've used that.
The EasyBCD function mentioned changes the active flag for you.
Just make sure you tell it to copy stuff to the one you want.

The MBR doesn't move. It's the MBR partition table which contains the "active" flag (one bit) which tells the MBR IPL where to go next in its boot chain. EasyBCD will have made sure that the PBR and all necessary files are there to be found.

Don't go using "write MBR". That's for something completely different. Will undo everything else you do.

Thanks a lot Terry, you are the man that understands the inner working of the mysterious and sacred boot files, thanks for all your help.

Can I ask when I go into the select the hard drive in bios, just under boot priority and say I have three hard drives (which I do now) I move one to the top, does the boot up process search for boot files only on the top drive, and then move down to the second drive if it doesn't find them in first, or is it top number one drive only that it searches for boot files?

Thanks, still trying to understand this.
Joe
 
It will look for an active partition on the first drive, and then the next, etc.
If it finds an active partition, but not the one you intended, the results are unpredictable depending on what is on that partition or even what used to be on that partition.
An old version of Windows or Linux might have left enough around to kick off the boot process which will then stall for lack of the rest of what it needs.
 
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