Not booting at the first attempt

kenwhelp

Member
Hello,
I have a couple of systems dual booting, triple booting and even quadruple booting without any problem.
I prepared a drive with two primary partitions. I then installed XP Home on the first partition of a Samsung N150 netbook, which booted fine.
I then installed Windows 7 HP on the second partition, which created the usual boot menu with the "earlier version of Windows" and "Windows 7" options, so all looking fine so far.
I then installed EasyBCD and made a couple of changes to the menu, like renaming the entries and shortening the boot pause time.
When I reboot from Windows 7 back to Windows 7 or Windows XP to Windows XP, the system starts fine.
The trouble starts when I reboot from Windows 7 to Windows XP, or Windows XP to Windows 7.
In each case, you can see the system trying to load, but then I am taken back to the initial BIOS boot screen, followed by the boot menu again.
I then select the same operating system as before and am then confronted with the option to Start Normally, Safe Mode, etc. I opt to Start Normally and the relevant operating system then loads fine.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening?
I have a tower system with XP, Vista, Win 7 and have since added Win 8 to the menu and that is working smoothly.
It is able to reboot from any of the operating systems to any of the others, so why would I be having a problem with the netbook, with XP and Win 7?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
Windows 8 "fast boot" does not play nicely with multibooting because it's not really rebooting, it's resuming from a disguised hibernation.
Try disabling W8 fast boot in the power options and see if the systems behave as you expect.
 
Windows 8 "fast boot" does not play nicely with multibooting because it's not really rebooting, it's resuming from a disguised hibernation.
Try disabling W8 fast boot in the power options and see if the systems behave as you expect.

Hi Terry,
Thanks for your input. I think you might have misinterpreted what I was saying about Windows 8. That is on a tower system and is working fine with XP, Vista and Win 7.
The problem I have is trying to run XP and Win 7 together on a netbook. Since my initial post, I decided to do a fresh install of XP Pro first onto the first partition, then Win 7 onto the second partition. Thinking that it might be a motherboard and/or hard drive issue. The fresh install was done on a different netbook and different 250GB drive, but still using a Samsung N150 with the Intel Atom 1.66GHz processor and 2GB RAM. To my astonishment, I got the same result on that one and that was before I'd even loaded BCD on, so I now know it's definitely not a BCD issue.
I have come to the conclusion that it's a netbook motherboard issue but I can't figure out why! :wtf:
I'm now looking for someone out there, like yourself, to hopefully come up with the answer.

Ken
 
Are the netbooks configured to shut down completely or are you letting them sleep/hibernate ?
The fact that a reboot to the same OS works, but to the other doesn't, makes me wonder if the cause might coincidentally be the same as erroneously mentioned in my previous post with regard to W8.
 
If you're not using hibernate/sleep/hybrid sleep, then I guess that's not the problem
(the trouble with W8 is that it uses hibernate when you ask for total shutdown unless you disable fast boot)
 
If you're not using hibernate/sleep/hybrid sleep, then I guess that's not the problem
(the trouble with W8 is that it uses hibernate when you ask for total shutdown unless you disable fast boot)

Thanks for your input, Terry. I've looked at the hibernate/sleep situation and the system is set for neither option.
I've just reinstalled (for the umpteenth time!) Win 7 Starter first on the first partition then Win XP on the second partition.
It's made no difference and still behaves as my original post.
I'm now convinced that it's a graphics problem for the following reason.
When the Windows CD (both for Win 7 and XP) is loading up initially for the install and after the initial boot files are loaded, the netbook always (99 times out of 100) goes back to the BIOS screen, where again you have to select to boot from the CD first. The install process then continues. Something must have loaded at that point for the CD to install OK subsequently but I don't know what.
My gut feeling tells me that this is the reason why the dual boot process is not happy but I can't put my finger on the exact reason why!
I've only come across this phenomenon of not loading the Windows disk first time on the netbook.
I've now thrown the towel in unless someone can come up with a solution to edit whatever for a cure!
 
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