This install is on an Acer Aspire One netbook which has Win 7 preinstalled - It has 3 partitions - 1- has no name or drive letter - Disk Mgmt says it's a "Recovery Partition" 13gb hidden I think (has lines thru it), 2 - says "System Reserved" and is the active partition, 100MB, 3 says "Acer C:" and says "Boot, Crash Dump, Page File, Primary 144gb", then the XP partition I added which is the "D" drive with 32 gb followed by unallocated space of about 42gb. I ran EasyBCD 2.1 and added XP. When I boot I get the "Windows Boot Manager Screen" showing Windows 7 and Windows XP - I boots 7 fine but when I boot XP I get the screen that "there may have been a problem so I get to pick from all the boot options" which I'm sure we've all seen before (ie: start normally, last know good config, safe mode , etc) no matter which one I pick, it ends up rebooting back to the Windows Boot Manager Sceen - If I pick 7, it boots fine but XP does the same thing every time - In 7 using win explorer I can see the D drive and all the stuff - boot.ini and ntldr are there - I must have screwed up something or could it be because it's an Acer machine? Any suggestions appreciated!! John
Boot Problem w/ XP after Win 7
- Thread starter Papa John
- Start date
It sounds like you used a partition manager to copy an XP clone onto your HDD ?
If you'd installed XP it would have reverted the boot to NTLDR, which you don't mention.
If this is an old XP from a different PC, it's never going to boot on different hardware without a "repair install" which will reconfigure the drivers and hardware map for the new environment.
That pre-supposes that XP is a full-retail version with all necessary drivers.
If XP was pre-installed on a former PC, it will be an OEM version, and not only will any media supplied not be able to reinstall on a new PC, the EULA specifically forbids it. An OEM OS doesn't belong to the user, it belongs to the hardware it came on. It's not portable to a different device, even if the old one is dead and gone.
If you'd installed XP it would have reverted the boot to NTLDR, which you don't mention.
If this is an old XP from a different PC, it's never going to boot on different hardware without a "repair install" which will reconfigure the drivers and hardware map for the new environment.
That pre-supposes that XP is a full-retail version with all necessary drivers.
If XP was pre-installed on a former PC, it will be an OEM version, and not only will any media supplied not be able to reinstall on a new PC, the EULA specifically forbids it. An OEM OS doesn't belong to the user, it belongs to the hardware it came on. It's not portable to a different device, even if the old one is dead and gone.
Terry - tried to reply but there was an error - i have a good copy of XP w/ SP2 and the Product Key etc all legit - could the be repaired or should I do a fresh install - I trying to be brief so I don't get knocked off again _ John
Terry -- I apologise for the short response but I can't type
so it takes me awhile to reply - by the time I got done, I
tried to send it but it errored out and said to refresh and
login again so I lost everything - so I sent the short msg
!! as you can tell, this is all new to me -evidently, here
you're either quick or dead!! So I did this in notepad to
see if I can paste it in a reply--
Anyway, you are exactly right about the partition clone - my
plan was to get all the XP stuff over to the netbook then do
a repair-install with my XP Installation/Upgrade CD -
Somewhere things went bad and I thought I had screwed up the
CD - but it seems everything is still there if I look at it
in W7 - I went ahead and started setup but the install was
dimmed out - All the other options were available But I
didn't want to screw thinks up any worse so that's where i'm
at - any suggestions gratefully accepted!! John
Terry -- I apologise for the short response but I can't type
so it takes me awhile to reply - by the time I got done, I
tried to send it but it errored out and said to refresh and
login again so I lost everything - so I sent the short msg
!! as you can tell, this is all new to me -evidently, here
you're either quick or dead!! So I did this in notepad to
see if I can paste it in a reply--
Anyway, you are exactly right about the partition clone - my
plan was to get all the XP stuff over to the netbook then do
a repair-install with my XP Installation/Upgrade CD -
Somewhere things went bad and I thought I had screwed up the
CD - but it seems everything is still there if I look at it
in W7 - I went ahead and started setup but the install was
dimmed out - All the other options were available But I
didn't want to screw thinks up any worse so that's where i'm
at - any suggestions gratefully accepted!! John
Last edited:
If it's an upgrade CD and you run it from a working OS, it will assume you want to upgrade that OS and "grey" the install because the running OS is newer.
If your clone is already SP3 and the running OS is W7, there will be nothing "upgradeable" on the PC
I think that might also apply to a repair install where the installation CD is at a lower level than what it's trying to repair.
If you need to retain the data and apps already on your XP, you will probably need to slipstream SP3 into your installation CD.
If you're happy to start with a fresh XP, you should just be able to boot the CD and do a clean install into empty space even though the CD is an upgrade, as long as you can produce a valid qualifying OS CD (95, 98, ME) when asked during the install.
If your clone is already SP3 and the running OS is W7, there will be nothing "upgradeable" on the PC
I think that might also apply to a repair install where the installation CD is at a lower level than what it's trying to repair.
If you need to retain the data and apps already on your XP, you will probably need to slipstream SP3 into your installation CD.
If you're happy to start with a fresh XP, you should just be able to boot the CD and do a clean install into empty space even though the CD is an upgrade, as long as you can produce a valid qualifying OS CD (95, 98, ME) when asked during the install.
Terry - Thks for the reply - I don't know how to "slipstream SP3" into my installation CD but I could Google it -I have qualifying OS CD for ME but OEM for 98se and floppies for 95 - I can always give it a try --
I see you moved me so did I do something wrong? If I embarrassed you or your company I am sorry - If you would rather I wouldn't post, please advise and I'll do as you wish - If you wish, I can send you a private msg explaining my situation in detail - Thanks for you help and response - John
I see you moved me so did I do something wrong? If I embarrassed you or your company I am sorry - If you would rather I wouldn't post, please advise and I'll do as you wish - If you wish, I can send you a private msg explaining my situation in detail - Thanks for you help and response - John
No problem.
It's just a general Windows question more than EasyBCD specific, so I just slid it across to the more appropriate forum. That's just so that future searchers with a similar question might find it more easily.
This is a volunteer forum so no more mine than yours. I've just been around a while so I've been given a cyber-broom and get to do a bit of daily sweeping up. Stick around and CG will have you emptying the bins before long.
It's just a general Windows question more than EasyBCD specific, so I just slid it across to the more appropriate forum. That's just so that future searchers with a similar question might find it more easily.
This is a volunteer forum so no more mine than yours. I've just been around a while so I've been given a cyber-broom and get to do a bit of daily sweeping up. Stick around and CG will have you emptying the bins before long.
Terry -- Well, many things have been tried and failed since our last contact - First the slipstream - I used the info
provided on this link http://www.winsupersite.com/article/xp/slipstreaming-windows-xp-with-service-pack-3-sp3 to perform this
function - there were actually several things that didn't work as shown: you can't use any version of VISTA to do the job (at
least it didn't work for me - he warns about 64 bit problems but I have 32 bit)-I could give you a full review but the bottom
line was it only worked on my old xp machine - the other thing is he tells to download ImgBurn and but the text uses Nero
(that was fun!) Anyway, I finally got it done - The next issue was the SATA driver problem - the repair won't load because
you need to have Sata for this MB and Acer's MB are propriety - Got around it buy changing the Bios to IDE - after all that
it ran and rebooted but gave me the error " HAL.ddl is corrupted or missing , etc " Since I couldn't load EasyBCD, I used my
Acronis Boot Media and activated their OS Selector - This showed no win 7 and 2 copies of win xp I tried more stuff to no
avail - I then tried Acer's eRecovery which didn't work until I reformatted the hdd and used the flash drive to restore to as
shipped condition - Acronis assures me we can do this with True Image Home 2012 with Plus Pack - There are other issues but I
don't know how much room I get or even if this message is too long - Papa
provided on this link http://www.winsupersite.com/article/xp/slipstreaming-windows-xp-with-service-pack-3-sp3 to perform this
function - there were actually several things that didn't work as shown: you can't use any version of VISTA to do the job (at
least it didn't work for me - he warns about 64 bit problems but I have 32 bit)-I could give you a full review but the bottom
line was it only worked on my old xp machine - the other thing is he tells to download ImgBurn and but the text uses Nero
(that was fun!) Anyway, I finally got it done - The next issue was the SATA driver problem - the repair won't load because
you need to have Sata for this MB and Acer's MB are propriety - Got around it buy changing the Bios to IDE - after all that
it ran and rebooted but gave me the error " HAL.ddl is corrupted or missing , etc " Since I couldn't load EasyBCD, I used my
Acronis Boot Media and activated their OS Selector - This showed no win 7 and 2 copies of win xp I tried more stuff to no
avail - I then tried Acer's eRecovery which didn't work until I reformatted the hdd and used the flash drive to restore to as
shipped condition - Acronis assures me we can do this with True Image Home 2012 with Plus Pack - There are other issues but I
don't know how much room I get or even if this message is too long - Papa