Dualboot XP - Problem

E

einszweidrei

New Member
Hello guys,

I'm from German so excuse my bad english.

I've got a problem. I installed XP after Win7, so the bootloader of Win 7 was overwritten. However I repaired it, but now I cant switch to XP. In one forum I read about this excellent programm EasyBCD. So I downloaded und installed it. But it didnt take the wished effect:
When I let search or manuelly pick the XP drive, EasyBCD cannot find an Win XP installation. By searching in the folders of the XP partition, I found the problem: EasyBCD didnt recognized my XP folder because it is not called "Windows" but "WINXP". If i rename this folder, XP will boot, but i cannot login, because after black screend Windows it freeze. Sure, because i renamed the systemfolder of XP and therefore it cannot read the files in "WINXP", because there is no folder called "WINXP". Otherwise after i added the entry and renamed the folder in "WINXP" XP cannot boot, because the direction in the written boot.ini doesnt conform to the systempath. So my question is:

Is there a possibility to have an Dualboot System without reinstalling XP?


Best regards,

einszweidrei

PS: Ive read the FAQ and lots of other threads! So dont think I have not used the search!
 
I have a similar problem.

XP resides on a separate HDD - all the contents ghosted from my old XP machine i.e. that should be bootable! When XP attempts to boot a blue screen shows up for a split second - not long enough to read any of it - and then it's back to repeat the boot routine.

After fiddling with some of the settings (to get a delay for the error message) the following showed up in the boot sequence

"NTDETECT FAILED; INVALID BOOT.INI FILE; BOOTING FROM C:\WINDOWS"

Just like "einszweidrei (123)" I tried several variations on the theme i.e. separate partition on the 1T HDD, read umpteen threads in countless fora etc. etc.

BTW my version of Win7 (64bit Professional) has no reference to a "boot.ini" file, either that or I'm just not looking in the right place.

TIA

Cheers

HJ
 
@123
rename your windows folder to Windows or WinNT
Run EasyBCD, add an entry using auto-configure
rename your windows folder back to WinXP
Use EasyBCD > Tools > Edit legacy entries to change boot.ini so that "Windows" is changed to WinXP in both places (default and OS)


Addendum:


@HJM
you can't just ghost an OS from one PC to another unless the hardware configurations are indentical.
The driver sets will be quite different.
You will need to "repair install" the XP ghost
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978788
If the XP system came pre-installed on your old PC, it will have an OEM serial number (check in Control panel > System) which ties it permanently to the original hardware, and you will not be able to activate it on new hardware because it violates the EULA.
 
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