Dual booting between XP Pro SP3 and 7
- Thread starter Sailorcancer
- Start date
Sailorcancer
Active Member
Yes the Ntdetect.com files are on both the 7 and XP drive. In the root.
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
Yeah, like Justin said, you will need to have a working ntdetect.com on your Win 7 partition.
That file is included in the zip on that page I gave the link to. Try replacing your ntdetect.com file with the downloaded copy, and see if it works.-Coolname007
Addendum:
Try the one from here: Windows XP - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
Maybe it will help. Or maybe it wont! :lol: Just try it though, to see if it does...
-Coolname007
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Coolname007
Distinguished Member
Active partition, Justin...not partitions!
There can only be one active partition at any particular point in time on the same computer. -Coolname007
Sailorcancer
Active Member
Ok so I went to the backup page and put that ntedect file in my 7 root.
I got the error message again
So I went back and edited the boot.ini again to do that 1 instead of 0. This time it let me save. Tried it again did not work.
Addendum:
Ok so far here is what is flagged:
Disk 0 (Windows 7)
- Boot
- Page File
- Crash Dump
- Primary Partition
NOW here's something else:
200 MB partition:
- System
-Active
- Primary Partition
4.58GB partition:
- Primary Partition
These two are both in Disk 0
Disk 1 (Windows XP)
- Active
- Primary Partition
I got the error message again
So I went back and edited the boot.ini again to do that 1 instead of 0. This time it let me save. Tried it again did not work.
Addendum:
Ok so far here is what is flagged:
Disk 0 (Windows 7)
- Boot
- Page File
- Crash Dump
- Primary Partition
NOW here's something else:
200 MB partition:
- System
-Active
- Primary Partition
4.58GB partition:
- Primary Partition
These two are both in Disk 0
Disk 1 (Windows XP)
- Active
- Primary Partition
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Coolname007
Distinguished Member
Ahh...so you didn't save it the last time?
That may be the cause of your problem then. try it again, this time remembering to save it with the rdisk values set to 1, as well as the partitions. Also, how many partitions do you have on the XP drive? that may need to be edited too, in boot.ini...-Coolname007
Active partition, Justin...not partitions!
-Coolname007
There can only be one active partition per disk. Since this user has two hard drives, they'll have two active partitions.
Sailorcancer
Active Member
Ahh...so you didn't save it the last time?
-Coolname007
What I did before when I could not save it was I saved it to my desktop. Then copied it from the desktop and put it over into the C (7) drive.
As far as the partitions go for my D (XP) drive there is only 1. Not like 7 that has 3.
Also here is what my boot file looks like. *after modifing it*
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Should anything else be changed?
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
Right...I just figured that out right before you posted!
I was under the impression before that there could only be one active partition at a given time, no matter how many disks, but it seems i was thinking of what BING calls "active", and not Windows. Sorry, my bad. -Coolname007
Sailorcancer
Active Member
I am not able to check the 200MB partition. When I right click on it in the disk management section it's faded out for me to explore it.
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
hmm...interesting.
So it now seems like your boot files should be on that 200 MB partition, and not the Win 7 partition, since it is the former that is active. So go ahead, and put your XP boot files on that partition instead. That should solve the problem.
-Coolname007
EDIT: I see Justin has already beat me to it...
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Sailorcancer
Active Member
hmm...interesting.
So go ahead, and put your XP boot files on that partition instead. That should solve the problem.
-Coolname007
EDIT: I see Justin has already beat me to it...
How do I access it?
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
Can you access it from "Computer" or whatever Win 7 calls it? it seems this a problem of greater magnitude than i had first suspected...
-Coolname007
If its really the active partition you should have access to it...
Is this install of XP pre-installed or did you install it? from the sounds of it it is running through that partition first when you boot from that drive in case you want to use the recovery options and than procceds to boot XP, but this could be a problem with dual-booting from another hard drive since it must have ntdetect.com to work properly.
Is this install of XP pre-installed or did you install it? from the sounds of it it is running through that partition first when you boot from that drive in case you want to use the recovery options and than procceds to boot XP, but this could be a problem with dual-booting from another hard drive since it must have ntdetect.com to work properly.
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
You posted the question, right as i was answering it! :lol: Ok, so first check to see if it shows up in "Computer" in Win 7, and then let us know.
-Coolname007
Sailorcancer
Active Member
I installed it. I have a copy of XP both home and pro.
No I am not able to get to it from the win 7 computer screen.
BUT
I had to get into XP today so I just swapped drives in the bios menu to have my XP drive boot first. When I got into it the active drive was visible there and was called the D drive.
So it was like:
XP = C
the MB drive = D
Then the 7 drive I think was E.
Or something in that nature.
Coolname007
Distinguished Member
But can you access it now? It sounds like to me things have changed since...
-Coolname007
EDIT: Realized we're talking about seeing it from Win 7 here, not XP...
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