Dual Booting XP Pro (32bit) and Win7 RC (64bit)

D

djs514

Member
Hi Everyone
I have XP Pro (32bit) installed on my laptop (Vista Downgrade from Lenovo) and I decided to install Win7 (64bit) in a dual boot set up. I'm far from a newbie, and I do computer repair, but I don't know everything.
I found this set up guide:

How to Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista - windows 7 - Lifehacker

After doing a backup, I booted GParted off of cd and resized the existing partition and left enough room for a new partition for Windows 7. I then shut down GParted, ran the Windows 7 installer, I used it to create a new 50GB partition but it gave me some error that it couldn't create a system partition, ok, no big deal, figuring it did not create the partition. Back to GParted, having discovered that the partition was created and formatted (or well GParted indicated it was NTFS, though it didn't seem like enough time to format since it was literally seconds, not minutes), so I set the drive flag to boot for the new partition, then booted back to Win7 installer, and it let me use the new partition to install. All was fine, but unlike was indicated in the Life Hacker instructions, there was no boot menu to select which version of Windows to boot to, it would just boot to XP. Only problem other than this was extremely slow RDP on my LAN, but thats a different topic for a different forum. Anyways, I went to Disk Managment and set the XP partition to the System drive. XP boots just fine now, but can't boot to Win7.
I found EasyBCD from here:
Add XP to 7 Boot Manager
which led me here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html
I installed EasyBCD 1.7.2 but I got this error:
Valid BCD Registry not Detected
EasyBCD has detected that your BCD boot data and MBR are either not from the latest version of Windows Vista, or don't yet exist.
If you'd like EasyBCD to correct these issues, press OK. This will modify the MBR and requires that you have Windows Vista installed on this machine. You can cancel at anytime. Press 'No' to exit EasyBCD now.
There are Yes and No buttons.

So now I am not sure what to do, a lot of the solutions here seem to indicate I have copy some files to the Win7 partition. Any suggestions and help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Daniel
 
Hi Daniel, welcome to NST.
The W7 install after XP should have created an automatic dual-boot for you, leading to a query about whether the install completed properly.
Can you see a folder called "boot" and a bootmgr file in any of your partition roots ? (you'll need folder options set thus to see them)
If you can see them, set that partition "active" and try the boot again.
If it fails to boot with an XP error message (NTLDR missing), then the MBR has not been updated to look for the correct (W7) bootmgr.
EasyBCD will fail to find the BCD if it is not on the "active" partition (inside the "boot" folder).
You should be using EasyBCD 2.0 latest build. It contains code to automate the actions necessary to dual-boot XP, which will need to be done manually in addition if you use 1.7.
 
Last edited:
Hi Terry,
Thanks for the reply. I switched the active drive to Win7 in Disk Management, booted to it, downloaded and installed EasyBCD 2.0 build 63, I then added XP to the list, let it add the files automatically. I tried it but it didn't work, so I booted back to Win7 and I figured the problem was it was pointing to C: not D:, assuming this is relative to Win7 since it's the boot disk. Sure enough this did the trick and it's all working now.

Incidentally, any performance issues I thought I saw before with Win7 seem to be gone, so another plus.

Thanks for the help.
Daniel
 
Hi,

Yes that makes sense. I think the autodetect in Easybcd assumes ntldr is on the Active partition ( usually is).

In your case, you had switched the active flag when installing 7.
 
XP Will not Boot on Dual Boot Windows7 PRO 64 and XP 32

I gather you guys are the cavalry! Please find outline of problem and I hope you will point me to the solution which I am sure falls under the bleedin' obvious category.

I bought a new PC and Installed Windows 7 Pro 64 on hard drive C: and Windows XP Pro 32 on hard drive D: I went onto the internet and found various sites that explained how to create a dual boot system using BCD. I followed the instructions and Bingo I had a dual boot computer with everything working. Weeks later I went abroad for a few days and when I returned I turned the computer on and once in the Windows Boot Manager Page, the option to select Windows 7 Pro worked fine but when I tried to select Windows XP, nothing happens, and the only key that works is ESC which restarts the boot process into the Windows boot manager page. I have updated BCD to the latest version of 2 and deleted and added the XP drive using the auto option to install NTDETECT and NTLDR and configure the boot.ini but still it will not boot into XP from the Windows boot manager page.

The text is as follows:-

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the boot loader

Default Windows 7 Professional
Timeout 10 seconds
Boot Drive K:\

Entry # 1
Name: Windows 7 Professional
BCD ID: (Current)
Drive C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry # 2
Name Windows Microsoft XP
BCD ID: {48405d9f-2a38-11df-9f48-d82f55ed7764}
Drive D:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR


If someone can spot what has happened, I would be eternally grateful.

Cheers
Patrick
 
XP Will not Boot on Dual Boot Windows7 PRO 64 and XP 32

Many thanks for your prompt response. I thought that there might be a problem with XP so I did a clean install by formatting the drive (D:smile: and re-installing Windows. Unfortunately the same problem still persists.

Thanks in Anticipation
Patrick
 
I apologise for not fully understanding exactly what you mean so would you very kindly give me a fuller explanation with an example of what I am doing wrong.

Many Thanks
Patrick
 
Remove and add the XP entry again. Let it auto-configure. Don't change the XP drive assignment to D.
(the BCD doesn't point to XP. It points to copies of the XP boot files. They point to XP. EasyBCD 2 does it all for you.)
 
Many Thanks Terry for replying so soon. I did as you said noticing the difference in the text about the entries is now as follows:-

Entry # 2
Name: Windows Microsoft XP
BCD ID {4805d9f-2a38-11df-9f48-d82f55ed7764}
Device: boot
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

Unfortunately, when I rebooted the computer and tried to select Windows XP, still nothing happens at all, not even error messages, meaning the only key that works is the ESC key in order to reboot back into the Windows Boot Manager Page. Do you have any more suggestions.

Many Thanks
Patrick
 
There must be a problem with the W7 boot manager if it just freezes with no attempt to get to XP and no failure.
Use Easy2/Diagnostics/Reset BCD and then if necessary, add the XP entry again.
If that doesn't work, try Easy2/Diagnostics/ Re-create boot files.
 
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