Hello, my first post here. I've already read through some of the topics here and I still can't figure out my problem.
I decided to install Windows 7 on to another partition with XP already installed. I've done this before with Vista and I figured it would be the same for 7, as well. Well, not knowing how much has changed, I simply used Vistabootpro (which I see you guys don't recommend), since it's worked for me in the past.
Anyways, from my previous experience, there should have been "Earlier version of Windows" or something like that under the boot entries in Vistabootpro but there wasn't this time. So what I THINK(I don't quite remember) I did was to try to restore the legacy bootloader or something similar to that. After that, I couldn't even boot into Windows 7, I started getting the "NTLDR is Missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". I tried to restore boot by using the recovery console for Windows XP with the XP cd, and I tried doing fixboot, fixmbr and it didn't work. I even tried running chkdsk /r & /p then ran bootcfg /rebuilt but it gave me an error saying that it failed.
So I just decided to reinstall my Windows 7 to work it out from there.
So finally, this is where I am at now: I installed easybcr and added Windows XP into the entry and when I try to boot from it, I get the "invalid boot.ini booting from c:\windows" followed by missing hal.dll error.
I know from reading the other thread from this forum that hal.dll means that I need to rebuild the boot.ini file, so I've tried to but it didn't work. I'm not exactly sure if I did it right or not, but I've tried multiple times so far and I'm hoping that I'm making some kind of mistake so it'll be at least fixable.
I still have hopes that I could recover it somehow since I have access to the drive itself from my Windows 7 partition (which is what I'm on right now). Any help will be greatly appreciated, I've been wasting my time on this for over 7 hours now! Thank you for taking your time reading this long post.
I decided to install Windows 7 on to another partition with XP already installed. I've done this before with Vista and I figured it would be the same for 7, as well. Well, not knowing how much has changed, I simply used Vistabootpro (which I see you guys don't recommend), since it's worked for me in the past.
Anyways, from my previous experience, there should have been "Earlier version of Windows" or something like that under the boot entries in Vistabootpro but there wasn't this time. So what I THINK(I don't quite remember) I did was to try to restore the legacy bootloader or something similar to that. After that, I couldn't even boot into Windows 7, I started getting the "NTLDR is Missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". I tried to restore boot by using the recovery console for Windows XP with the XP cd, and I tried doing fixboot, fixmbr and it didn't work. I even tried running chkdsk /r & /p then ran bootcfg /rebuilt but it gave me an error saying that it failed.
So I just decided to reinstall my Windows 7 to work it out from there.
So finally, this is where I am at now: I installed easybcr and added Windows XP into the entry and when I try to boot from it, I get the "invalid boot.ini booting from c:\windows" followed by missing hal.dll error.
I know from reading the other thread from this forum that hal.dll means that I need to rebuild the boot.ini file, so I've tried to but it didn't work. I'm not exactly sure if I did it right or not, but I've tried multiple times so far and I'm hoping that I'm making some kind of mistake so it'll be at least fixable.
I still have hopes that I could recover it somehow since I have access to the drive itself from my Windows 7 partition (which is what I'm on right now). Any help will be greatly appreciated, I've been wasting my time on this for over 7 hours now! Thank you for taking your time reading this long post.