I have been operating with a dual boot system (XP/Windows7) for some time and decided to move to a single boot (Windows 7) environment. My Dell desktop has two drives (180GB and 1TB); both operating systems reside on the smaller drive. EasyBCD looked like the perfect solution - if properly used. I appeared to have made a somewhat catastrophic error.
I booted into Windows 7
I checked settings in the Disk Management Window where Drive X (where the XP OS resides) was classified as system and active (I think)
I ran Easy BCD and using the Change Boot Drive function, set it to Drive C (W7)
I re-checked the Disk Management Window and X was still the system drive while Drive C was marked active (I think)
[My tentative recollections reflect my rather rusty and flaky understanding of partition management]
I rebooted the machine
Result: after BIOS tests a black screen with a blinking cursor and no further booting
Attempted to recover via my Windows 7 CD
At the command prompt, Drive X appears to be the CD drive and the only visible partitions seem to be on my second (1TB) drive
I had expected the MBR to point to the W7 partition to continue booting rather than go to the XP partition and be redirected from there
I've clearly fouled up
[I'm typing this on my XP laptop!]
Before I contemplate reloading Windows 7 from scratch ...any help would be much appreciated
Many thanks
RLM
Addendum
I was wrong about the limited number of visible partitions; I found Windows 7 in Drive G!
I've now managed to sort it in 2 steps thanks to advice under Option 2 in
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering+the+Windows+Bootloader+from+the+DVD
But encountered "element not found" message when attempting to add the Windows 7 installation to boot list (the only installation found)
Message was I think the result of the Windows Partition not being active and remedied via Kevon Walcott message in
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/7791044e-db7f-4144-a96c-945299811f58
I then was able to add the iinstallation successfully
The system rebooted directly into Windows 7 (I now have a single boot system) and all seems well...
Hope this may be of use to someone...
I booted into Windows 7
I checked settings in the Disk Management Window where Drive X (where the XP OS resides) was classified as system and active (I think)
I ran Easy BCD and using the Change Boot Drive function, set it to Drive C (W7)
I re-checked the Disk Management Window and X was still the system drive while Drive C was marked active (I think)
[My tentative recollections reflect my rather rusty and flaky understanding of partition management]
I rebooted the machine
Result: after BIOS tests a black screen with a blinking cursor and no further booting
Attempted to recover via my Windows 7 CD
At the command prompt, Drive X appears to be the CD drive and the only visible partitions seem to be on my second (1TB) drive
I had expected the MBR to point to the W7 partition to continue booting rather than go to the XP partition and be redirected from there
I've clearly fouled up
[I'm typing this on my XP laptop!]
Before I contemplate reloading Windows 7 from scratch ...any help would be much appreciated
Many thanks
RLM
Addendum
I was wrong about the limited number of visible partitions; I found Windows 7 in Drive G!
I've now managed to sort it in 2 steps thanks to advice under Option 2 in
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering+the+Windows+Bootloader+from+the+DVD
But encountered "element not found" message when attempting to add the Windows 7 installation to boot list (the only installation found)
Message was I think the result of the Windows Partition not being active and remedied via Kevon Walcott message in
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/7791044e-db7f-4144-a96c-945299811f58
I then was able to add the iinstallation successfully
The system rebooted directly into Windows 7 (I now have a single boot system) and all seems well...
Hope this may be of use to someone...
