Dual Boot Problem XPPro & WIN7RTM

M

mdelong

Member
I'm quite stumped trying to get a dual boot of XP and WIN 7rtm working.
I started in XP (c:smile: and repartitioned the drive in my laptop. After installing win7 on a separate partition (f:smile: and rebooting to setup win7 the boot menu did not appear and Win7 boots automatically without any option for XP. Using EasyBCD latest version beta I was able to add the xp entry to the BCD using the auto settings. After a restart I was greated by windows boot manager offering two options (XP and Windows 7). If I boot in to win 7 everything is fine. On next reboot I try win XP. XP boots fine and works fine. On the next reboot the windows boot manager errors with the following:

file: /boot/BCD

0xc000000f

the message said something like and error occurred accessing the file.

In order to boot back to WIN 7 i can insert a install disk and boot from it choose repair and restart. win 7 then boots without a boot manager menu and I am back to where i started with no option to boot XP.

Anyone have any thoughts?
 
I assume XP is the first partition and is marked System , Active in Disk Management?

Mysterious that bcd seems to be being deleted by booting into XP.

Try this :

Boot into 7 - go to folder options and make sure Hidden files and protected operating systen files are showing.

Copy and paste ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from the XP partition onto the 7 partition.

In Disk Management, make sure 7 partition is marked Active.

Boot 7 dvd and run startup repair 3 times.

Boot into 7, open Easybcd, remove the previous XP entry and add a new one ( this time it will point at the 7 partition).

Hope it helps
 
Have you installed W7 on an unpartitioned space? If you have, W7 well have created a "secret" boot partition. What you need to do is go into disk management once back in W7 and assign it a drive letter (and do the same in XP if XP doesn't give it an assignment), at which point you should have no further problems.
 
When I installed 7 it was installed in to a partitioned space. There is no hidden partition on my drive. Just C:\ (winxp) and F:\ (win7). I've attached the screen shot of disk management.

How do I make the win 7 partition "active"? I thought it was not possible to make a logical drive active.

Thanks for the replies.
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I am in the same boat here, booting into 7 and not xp. 7 is installed last on my drive and is not marked as "system" but I used some tools to mark it primary and active. however booting into xp always yields a /ntldr error and the ntldr file i have is 13GB
 
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Hi Mike8519, welcome to NST.
The "active" flag is a signal to the MBR of where to find the partition containing the PBR which will continue the boot process.
You should not alter it speculatively.
Unless you've moved your boot files and are informing the MBR of the new correct location, you will in fact be telling it to look in the wrong place.
"NTLDR missing or corrupt" when trying to boot XP from Vista W7 is an indication you haven't got everything in the right place.
Use EasyBCD 2.0 latest build, (not 1.7), delete the XP entry, add it again and accept the offer to auto-configure.
EasyBCD will put everything in the right place for you.

Mdelong,
can you copy/paste the output from EasyBCD "display settings" in debug mode.
You're right. You cant boot from (or set active) a logical drive.
 
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Debug text:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
default {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
displayorder {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
timeout 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
device partition=F:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Enterprise (recovered)
locale en-US
recoverysequence {6dcbbc39-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=F:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {b3280ff4-9bc4-11de-b3b0-806e6f6e6963}

-----------------------------------

after adding the XP entry it looks like this before rebooting:

---
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
default {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
displayorder {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
{6dcbbc3b-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
timeout 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {6dcbbc38-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
device partition=F:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Enterprise (recovered)
locale en-US
recoverysequence {6dcbbc39-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=F:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {b3280ff4-9bc4-11de-b3b0-806e6f6e6963}
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {6dcbbc3b-9bd5-11de-a912-94826382e284}
device partition=C:
path \NTLDR
description Microsoft Windows XP
 
That all looks fine.
The question is, "what's XP doing to the boot when you run it ?"
Are you quite sure that your XP is good ? Is there a possibility that it has a malware infection which could be contaminating the boot process ?
Alternatively, you could have a bad block in the boot sector which is constantly provoking repairs.
If you can rule out the former, try running a chkdsk /f on the C: partition to find and fix the latter if that's the cause.
 
Terry60...

Thanks for the reply... XP is good and as far as I can tell there are no malware or other infections that would be causing any problems. I ran checkdisk and it reported no problems. I'm stumped with this issue.
 
Looking back at your screenshot, I notice the CD-ROM I ignored before.
That's not a bootable W7 that you've left in the tray is it ?
That will make W7 boot without a menu, if it finds it in the tray.
 
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