Dual boot, 2 HDDs, XP & Win7

jpChris

Member
Hi all,

I've been reading until my eyes are bleeding trying to figure out how to dual boot XP and Win7 on separate drives and I'm still lost.

WhoWhatWhenWhereWhy:

On HDD (0) I have Win XP Pro with 3 partitions (C:\, D:\, E:\) and I have a CD-RW (F:\) and a DVD-RW (G:\).

On my second\Slave HDD(1) I have the same setup and I use it as a "break me" drive for trying new things and doing dumb stuff (hey, at least I'm honest about it :tongueout:)

I wanted to try Win7, so I found an extra 40GB HD, made 2 partitions, unplugged my Main HD(0) (and the Slave drive so there was just one HDD hooked up) and made the 40GB as Master with the intention of making it as a slave so I could boot to it to test Win7. I installed Win7 with no problems whatsoever. I labeled the first partition as (Win7)C: and the second partition as (Win7)D:.

After playing with it, I unplugged the 40GB, set the jumper to Slave and rebooted into XP.

I went to boot to Win7 on the second HDD, but when I selected HDD(1), all I got was a gray bar along the bottom of the screen. (by the by, both HDDs show in the BIOS and Disk Management and healthy)

It seems to me it should be an easy matter of amending the XP boot.ini to boot to the Win7 drive. However I haven't been able to find anything that applies to my setup, nor without major brain damage.

My first option on the boot screen is:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP etc., etc.)
My second option on the boot screen is:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP[2] etc., etc.)

How do I amend the boot.ini to give me the option to boot to Win7?
 
Hello jpChris, welcome to NST.
The XP bootloader is not forward compatible, so can't boot Win 7. You can't put an entry in your boot.ini file, and expect it to boot Win 7. :wink: What you need to do is set your Win 7 drive first in the boot sequence in the BIOS (so it will boot first), and then use EasyBCD 2.0 Beta, Build 63 to add an XP entry to the Win 7 BCD. Once you do that, then you will have a dual-boot.

Cheers.

Jake
 
Hi Jake,

Thanks for the "fix". It's a lot less brain damage than other stuff I've seen.

I've looked at the screen shots of BCD, and I don't know what I'm doing. Since you know what my configuration is and what I want to do, would you please spell it out for me in 1-2-3 fashion? And, do I leave the BIOS setting to boot to HDD(1)? And, will I still have an option to boot to XP in the boot screen?

Thanks, again, Jake.
 
Really, I don't know how I can spell it out in a 1-2-3 fashion better than I have already done...:wink: But I'll try. :brows:


  1. Reboot, get into your BIOS (by pressing whatever key it tells you to press at the first splash screen you get to at startup).
  2. Navigate to the page called "Boot Sequence", "Boot Order", or the likes, and alter the boot order (usually accomplished by pressing the 'U' or 'D' keys on your keyboard to move a selected entry either up or down, respectively) so the Win 7 drive comes before any other entries with numbers before them.
  3. Next, save the changes, and exit your BIOS.
  4. You should boot right away into Win 7 at this point (no menu, or option to boot into XP). But no worries. We'll fix that quick enough...
  5. Now download and install EasyBCD 2.0 Beta, Build 63.
  6. Open it.
  7. Navigate to the Add/Remove Entries page, and select the Windows tab.
  8. Select ".../NT/XP" in the Type drop-down menu.
  9. Click on Add Entry.
  10. Accept the offer to recreate/configure boot.ini, and place a copy of NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM (two files used by XP in order to boot, in addition to boot.ini) in the "system" partition.
  11. DO NOT MODIFY THE XP ENTRY IN ANY WAY AFTERWARDS!
  12. Now reboot, and you should get to a menu this time around.
  13. Select either Win 7 or XP to boot into, and both should work.
You're very lucky. A beta build ago you would have had to find those files yourself, and copy them manually. With Build 63 of EasyBCD beta, it does all the hard work for you.

Jake
 
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Hi Coolname007,

Thanks!

...I don't know how I can spell it out in a 1-2-3 fashion better than I have already done...
Well, you've done admirably. All users (newbies, anyway) need a little hand-holding when doing something unfamiliar and there's a possibility of bollixing things up.

As I said, I've read a lot about this, but the articles were filled with stuff that confused instead of enlightened. However, thanks to you, I now have a 1-2-3 approach that I can share with others(*) wanting to do this.

So, THANKS(!), again, Jake.
(*) p.s. Would it be OK with you if I did a copy\paste of your instructions elsewhere; giving you credit and as to where I got it from, of course?
 
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Hi Jake,

So I'm assuming your problem has been solved?
Don't know yet. I had the drive hooked up as a slave, fully intending to do as you said. However, accessing it from XP Explorer to copy\paste BCD (as well as a couple of folders with programs I knew probably wouldn't work — I am testing it afterall) to the "D:" partition, and seeing what the differences were between XP and W7 layout of files etc., when my computer went wonky on next boot.

There were about a dozen programs that were "broken". They (Avast!, Dictionary, Checkers, Adobe, HiJackThis, SeaMonkey, half of my Sound Card files, a couple of my printer files, CrapCleaner, WinPatrol, and a few others) all showed the blue\white box where the .exe files were supposed to be. Plus I couldn't uninstall them; I kept getting a "fatal error" (no BSOD, though) from Add\Remove Programs and the uninstallers themselves. I finally had to hookup my backup drive to fix them.

So, after a quick Google, I appear to be the only one this has happened to. :wtf:

This weekend I'll hookup one of my backup drives (that I don't care if it gets munged) as Master and follow your directions. Hopefully it'll work.

Quick question: When I booted to W7, there were two accounts, Administrator and Chris. Should I boot to the Admin account, Chris, or reformat and start over? I don't remember adding the Chris account — and I don't want one. I want to be the ADMIN, tweak, play, break, and then create a user account to tweak, play, break, etc., so when I weigh in, they'll know what the average dummy is going to encounter doing stuff.
 
Hi Jake,

Don't know yet. I had the drive hooked up as a slave, fully intending to do as you said. However, accessing it from XP Explorer to copy\paste BCD (as well as a couple of folders with programs I knew probably wouldn't work — I am testing it afterall) to the "D:" partition, and seeing what the differences were between XP and W7 layout of files etc., when my computer went wonky on next boot.

There were about a dozen programs that were "broken". They (Avast!, Dictionary, Checkers, Adobe, HiJackThis, SeaMonkey, half of my Sound Card files, a couple of my printer files, CrapCleaner, WinPatrol, and a few others) all showed the blue\white box where the .exe files were supposed to be. Plus I couldn't uninstall them; I kept getting a "fatal error" (no BSOD, though) from Add\Remove Programs and the uninstallers themselves. I finally had to hookup my backup drive to fix them.
It sounds like you damaged stuff when you moved it over to your D: partition...
Have you tried moving all that stuff back to their original places to see if solves the problem?
Why were you trying to C&P the BCD? The BCD file is a boot file of Vista, which is essential in order to boot, but you only need one, and have it in the "system" "active" partition (as seen from Disk Management). Should it happen your BCD gets corrupted, or otherwise damaged, you can usually boot from either a Vista installation DVD (if you have one), or the recovery disk hosted on this site which is basically just a trimmed-down version of the Vista CD, which you can only used for repairs, not reinstallations.
So, after a quick Google, I appear to be the only one this has happened to. :wtf:

This weekend I'll hookup one of my backup drives (that I don't care if it gets munged) as Master and follow your directions. Hopefully it'll work.

Quick question: When I booted to W7, there were two accounts, Administrator and Chris. Should I boot to the Admin account, Chris, or reformat and start over? I don't remember adding the Chris account — and I don't want one. I want to be the ADMIN, tweak, play, break, and then create a user account to tweak, play, break, etc., so when I weigh in, they'll know what the average dummy is going to encounter doing stuff.
I would boot into the Admin account if I were you, unless you have a specific reason not to do so. But try moving all that stuff back that you said you moved to the D: partition, and see if the problem is fixed. :wink:
 
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