lost my dual boot

chirp

Member
So I have had a dual boot from 2011 to current. Boot to either XP or Win 7 (upgrade from Vista).
Couple of weeks ago everything changed...current situation:

Boot up...ASUS motherboard logo shows up followed by black screen with "Disk Boot Failure; insert system disc and press enter" . Neither XP nor Vista discs do anything or disc drives are not being read.

Reboot...hold F8 button down and blue boot menu screen shows up listing my three hard drives and two disc drives. I arrow down to the first hard drive and enter. I get a black screen offering the option of Windows XP Pro or Windows XP Pro setup. (BTW, I can F8 again at this point and enter into safe mode options. Don't see any point to that so haven't gone that way) I enter into Windows XP option and OS comes up and runs Windows XP. (Up until 2 weeks ago the boot up options were Win XP or Win 7.) I now have no way to bring up the WIN7 OS.

When in XP (C:smile:, I can click my computer and open the D : Drive where the Vista/7 resides. Some folders are available. I have found the EasyBCD program. When I open it I get the following notation box: "Valid BCD Registry Not Detected". "EasyBCD has detected that your BCD boot data and MBR are either not from the latest version of Win Vista or, don't yet exist". "If you would like EasyBCD to correct these issues press OK. This will modify the MBR and requires that you have Windows Vista installed on this machine. Press no to exit EasyBCD now".

I have stopped there, not having the guts or smarts to click OKAY.
My best attempt to find the current Bootloader follows:

[XP boot loader]
Timeout=5
Default= C:\$WIN_NT$~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[operating systems]
Multi(0)Disc(0)Rdisk(0)Partion(1)\Windows=Microsoft Windows XP Professional/Fastdetect/No Execute=Optin
C:\$WIN_NT$~bt\BOOTSECT.DAT=MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL SETUP

However, from old notes I believe the setup in EasyBCD from back in 2011 looked as follows:

[boot loader]
time out=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=Microsoft Windows XP Professional/fastdetect/No Execute=Opt In

Please understand that I am NOT intellegent when it comes to boot ups and software. I have had lots of help from others. I ask for help once more in hopes of an easy fix. I have looked over the suggested information and do have a better understanding of dual boot systems and EasyBCD but a couple of weeks of research is not enough for me to go it alone!

First can someone tell me exactly what has happened and why my system can't find the proper boot info to present the original dual boot option at start up?

Second and more obviously, can someone suggest my next move?

Thanks for your time, Chirp
 
So I have had a dual boot from 2011 to current. Boot to either XP or Win 7 (upgrade from Vista).
Couple of weeks ago everything changed...current situation:

Boot up...ASUS motherboard logo shows up followed by black screen with "Disk Boot Failure; insert system disc and press enter" . Neither XP nor Vista discs do anything or disc drives are not being read.

Reboot...hold F8 button down and blue boot menu screen shows up listing my three hard drives and two disc drives. I arrow down to the first hard drive and enter. I get a black screen offering the option of Windows XP Pro or Windows XP Pro setup. (BTW, I can F8 again at this point and enter into safe mode options. Don't see any point to that so haven't gone that way) I enter into Windows XP option and OS comes up and runs Windows XP. (Up until 2 weeks ago the boot up options were Win XP or Win 7.) I now have no way to bring up the WIN7 OS.

When in XP (C:smile:, I can click my computer and open the D : Drive where the Vista/7 resides. Some folders are available. I have found the EasyBCD program. When I open it I get the following notation box: "Valid BCD Registry Not Detected". "EasyBCD has detected that your BCD boot data and MBR are either not from the latest version of Win Vista or, don't yet exist". "If you would like EasyBCD to correct these issues press OK. This will modify the MBR and requires that you have Windows Vista installed on this machine. Press no to exit EasyBCD now".

I have stopped there, not having the guts or smarts to click OKAY.
My best attempt to find the current Bootloader follows:

[XP boot loader]
Timeout=5
Default= C:\$WIN_NT$~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[operating systems]
Multi(0)Disc(0)Rdisk(0)Partion(1)\Windows=Microsoft Windows XP Professional/Fastdetect/No Execute=Optin
C:\$WIN_NT$~bt\BOOTSECT.DAT=MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL SETUP

However, from old notes I believe the setup in EasyBCD from back in 2011 looked as follows:

[boot loader]
time out=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=Microsoft Windows XP Professional/fastdetect/No Execute=Opt In

Please understand that I am NOT intellegent when it comes to boot ups and software. I have had lots of help from others. I ask for help once more in hopes of an easy fix. I have looked over the suggested information and do have a better understanding of dual boot systems and EasyBCD but a couple of weeks of research is not enough for me to go it alone!

First can someone tell me exactly what has happened and why my system can't find the proper boot info to present the original dual boot option at start up?

Second and more obviously, can someone suggest my next move?

Thanks for your time, Chirp
 
Well, it turns out that after the F8 boot up, I decided to choose my sata 2 drive rather than the first drive listed. The system booted up in old style giving me the choice between XP and WIN7. That's what I was looking for.
I slipped into the boot preference order and established my sata2 as the place to go to first and everything appears to be back the way it was. I have no idea how the order was changed to begin with as I was no where near the bios or setup functions for years.

sorry, a pretty simple answer to the problem.
Sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees!

Thanks to all readers. Chirp
 
Back
Top