I made error with EASYBCD dual boot, no drive will boot

Drive 1 ( XP pro 32 bit ) Seagate sata 160gb.
Drive 2 ( Win7 64bit) Seagate sata 1tb (2 partitions-1 with win7 and other with unallocated)

Issue, tried to move to XP partition on 160gb drive to unallocated partition on 1tb drive. After cloning partition with acronis 2012, the PC would not dual boot any more. I had to switch boot order in bios in order to switch OS's. So, I down loaded EASYBCD to my XP manchine and ran dual boot and added WIN7 to boot.ini. However, I made a mistake on my end. I change the WIN7 boot drive to C: which is the same as XP. Upon rebooting, I had 2 choice between OS, Windows 7 and Windows 7. No more XP boot. It does not make a difference in on which drive I boot from in bios. I also tried taking 1 drive out same result. It did not matter if I had the 160gb in or just the 1tb. Same result.

I ran WIN7 recovery, boots to build 7600 error windows not genuine, which is not usable anymore. I assume because of wrong drive path i made in Easybcd dual boot, and when I get that resolved all will be well on that part. However, The XP partition is not seen when I try to recover the XP on the 1tb drive. Nor is it seen when I plug it into external drive on another PC. So I fear that is flushed. So no fear right I have the XP on the 160gb drive. When I plug that drive into external drive I can locate all my files, but the drive will not boot.

QUESTION 1:
So, my question is: " How can I get the 160gb drive to boot again if XP recovery disk fails and repair fails. Booting to safemode CMD promt fails as well. Is it possible to manually repair the Boot.ini file when it installed via usb external drive on file level? If so how.

Question 2:
How did both harddrive OS's fail boot.ini when I installed EASYBCD on the 160gb drive? Does EASYBCD write to both drives?

Question 3:
How do I get 1tb to boot again. The WIN7 files are viewable in usb external drive, but the XP files are not partition on the 1tb is not?
 
Last edited:
that links instructions for win7 & Vista. Is there a link for XP pro 32 bit.?

also, I hav enoticed that all instructions are assuming you can boot to an OS, or at least get to CMD. I can do neither. Do I need to pull drive and put it on another PC to manual look at boot.ini file and then repair? Then put HDD back in other PC?
 
Last edited:
Those instructions assume Windows Vista or 7 installed on that machine somewhere. They do not assume ability to boot into an OS.
 
Back
Top