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.
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.