I wanted to create a dual boot win 7 over xp but forgot the last step & lost the xp!!

mashall

Member
i installed a xp over windows 7. using EasyBCD , i wanted to create a dual boot loader therforefollowing the instructions i installed the windows 7 bootloader to the MBR -> pushed "Write MBR" button and forgot to add a new entry for my XP , instead i reboot the system & thats it! the xp was gone.
i installed EasyBCD on win 7 and tried to add a new entry of type "windows NT/2k/XP/2k3" but easybcd could not find a valid installation of my xp!!!
How can i recover my XP and add it to the windows 7 boot loader list???
 
You can't lose an OS just by changing the information in the BCD.
Post a screenshot of your Disk Management from W7. (see the sticky for how-to, if needed)
 
Disk Managment screen shot

thnx for your relpy .
windows installation paths are:
windows 7 -> O:
windows XP -> M:
 

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Did you install XP into a non-standard named folder ? (ie not Windows or WinNT ?)
btw your Windows 7 boot files are in the Mac partition (the "system" partition). Is that where you intended ?
 
Yes. XP is installed in a folder named other than Windows or WinNT and
windows 7 boot files were automatically installed on system partition (C:\) during the installation process without my intention
 
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The very latest build of the Beta, will also check for "WinXP".
Otherwise, if you choose to install XP in a folder of your own name, the software can't second guess what you might have called it.
You'll need to rename the folder to "Windows", run EasyBCD 2 to add the entry, rename the folder back to your custom name, then use EasyBCD > Tools > edit legacy entries to edit the boot.ini which it created to change the "Windows" folder name to "yourname", in both places it occurs.

You can copy the W7 boot files to the W7 partition using EasyBCD 2 > BCD Backup/Repair > Change boot drive
(point it to W7 when prompted)
Then alter your BIOS to boot from the W7 drive instead of the other one, and you can also subsequently delete the bootmgr file and the \boot folder from the other partition once W7 shows as "boot" "active" and "system"
 
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