How to regain initial configuration (Vista & XP, Dual-Boot)

Mausebaer

Distinguished Member
Hello!

At the moment I'm facing a serious problem....

Win XP doesn't start anymore, Vista only using drive 3...

I'm explaining now how this happened:

In the beginnig I had one drive. I call it D1, 3 partitions.
On this drive I have 2 OS, Vista Prof. and as second (dual-boot) OS WinXP as well as some data on the 3rd partition..
(Starting WinXP the deault letter ist not c: but k:smile:

Then I added a second drive (D2) which I use only for data storage.

On a third drive(D3) I installed 4 partitions, 3 for testing new OS and a larger backup-parition.
On the first partition here I installed tentatively Win7. (The two remaining partitions are empty for further OS).
To prevent mess on the working OS-Patition (D1) I disconnected D1 and installed Win7 on D3 first partition and it worked.

After reconnecting D1 I could start Vista and WinXP, but not Win7...
To overcome this, I used EasyBCD. EasyBCD found the Win7 installation... after tinkering with EasyBCD for a while I found how to start all tree OS. But I found also (with help from this forum) that I have to make D3 as the first boot device to get it work.

Now, after a couple of months I found tha the Win7 installation I do not need anymore and killed it...

From this point of time, I cannot start WinXP anymore...
After this I tried to repair the entries with EasyBCD, but somehow it don't work.
Then I tried to delete all entries and install the Vista- and XP entries new.
But at system start all three entries are shown and the changes seen to have no effect...

Now I'm trying to regain my old initial configuration writing the MBR to D1, but I cannot start D1 Vista nor XP, disconnecting D3. I only can start Vista (on D1) with connected D3, but not XP...

I understand that obviously boot data are present only on D3...

Question:
How can I get back my initial configuration, starting Vista and XP an D1 without D3 ???

Thanks a lot for your help,

Wolfgang
 
Hi Terry60,

Thanks for your hints, I'll be trying that.

Just changing the bootdevice to D1 didn't work (error message that BCD file does not contain a valid OS entry), at the moment I need D3 to boot Vista. But I managed to Boot WinXP somehow... I added a second WinXP entry and let EasyBCD find it automatically. Now I have one entry pointing to root:\ntldr and one pointing to root:\NST\ntldr, and both entries work... curious...
but there had been an entry pointing to root:\NST\easyldr before, what obviously didn't work.

Nevertheless, I'll be reading the NST-wiki to solve the issue and be reporig whether it works.

Regards,
Wolfgang

P.S.: I translated EasyBCD into German and sent the language file to Mahmoud...

Addendum:

...I have to admit that I was blind on both eyes...
It is so easy...
As it looks like at the moment, I have now two BCD and if I mess it on D1 I have still BCD on D3, right?

It seems as if the BCD on D1 was destroyed for some reason, don't ask me why...

In any case,
Thank you a lot for your helpful hint!!!

Wolfgang :smile:
 
Last edited:
Yes "change boot drive" in EasyBCD copies, not moves, so the original BCD/bootmgr still exist.
When you boot Vista and confirm it is Startpartitition, Systempartition and Aktiv, then you can manually delete the \boot folder and bootmgr from the other drive if you want to reclaim the space.
 
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