XP doesnt boot from EasyBCD multiboot menu

RogerB

Member
Hi

I have a well established XP SP3 installation on an SSD. I bought a new SSD and installed Win 8.1Pro - that install set up a system partition at the front of the new SSD, before the Win8.1 partition. I then installed EasyBCD in order to get a multiboot menu.

When it starts the multiboot menu comes up fine. Default is to 8.1 which loads OK. If I select XP there is a message "<windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe is missing" and it stops. I can use the bios boot menu (F12) to select the XP SSD and it boots fine. Seems as if it is looking for XP on the Win8 SSD. EasyBCD is installed in both XP and Win8.1 installs. (There is another XP VHD in another partition on the new SSD but I cant imagine it finding anything in that)

I hope this makes sense, feels as if it should be simple but I have tried various settings in EasyBCD without success.

Thanks in advance
 
Did you create the XP entry in EasyBCD or did you create the Windows 8 one? In all events, deleting and re-adding the XP partition with the 'auto' checkbox ticked should be a good first step?
 
Hi,
Thank you for speedy response.
I created the XP entry using EasyBCD.
I deleted and added back the XP entry using EasyBCD running in XP, restarted and the same happened again - ntoskrnl missing.
Then I loaded W8.1 and ran EasyBCD from there, deleted the XP entry and added it back. The first time I did that the XP entry didnt show on the boot menu. Tried again and it showed up OK. When I select to run XP the error was NST\NTLDR is missing.
Does that help?
Thanks again
 
You say "... tried various settings...."
Did you alter what EasyBCD set up ?
If so don't !
Just let EasyBCD auto-configure and leave it.
If you think it made a mistake - It didn't.
 
You say "... tried various settings...."
Did you alter what EasyBCD set up ?
If so don't !
Just let EasyBCD auto-configure and leave it.
If you think it made a mistake - It didn't.

I did try various settings before my first post here, but have only done as I said since ComputerGuru's response and it is still not working. Seems to be unable to find either ntoskrnl or ntldr depending on whether the XP line is added by EasyBCD running in XP or Win8.1.

Thanks again
 
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