Problem with Dual Boot Windows XP and failing drive with Windows 7

Schnecken

Member
Problem with Dual Boot Windows XP and Windows 7
H,i I hope you can help me. I originally installed Windows XP 32. bit SP3 on a 300 GB SATA drive. It worked fine. I decided to try the Windows 7 Beta on a separate 30 GB IDE Drive. It too worked ok.
I'm now getting the message that the IDE drive is failing and to back it up. I want to remove the dual boot option at startup that I believe is on the SATA drive. I've tried running EasyBCD on the IDE drive with Windows 7 but I get the following sequences of error messages: " Valid BCP Registry Not Detected." EasyBCD offers to correct the problem. Next error is: "Unfortunately EasyBCD could not automatically detect the drive letter of your boot device... to proceed please enter the letter of your boot drive below.." The only option is the C drive. EasyBCD is now trying to creat the BCD registry from Scratch.... The the final error message "The store import has failed. The requested system device cannot be found."
When I boot into Windows 7 Only 1 drive is seen in the Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Management. The IDE drive. Since this drive is failing, I'll only use XP on this computer, but I would like to change the MBR of the SATA drive back to its original state i.e. just directly booting XP with out the options to chose Windows 7/ Older operating System (XP) at the startup
Is there a way that I can use EasyBCD on the SATA drvie with XP to do this? Thanks.
John
 
 
Problem with Dual Boot Windows XP and Windows 7
H,i I hope you can help me. I originally installed Windows XP 32. bit SP3 on a 300 GB SATA drive. It worked fine. I decided to try the Windows 7 Beta on a separate 30 GB IDE Drive. It too worked ok.
I'm now getting the message that the IDE drive is failing and to back it up. I want to remove the dual boot option at startup that I believe is on the SATA drive. I've tried running EasyBCD on the IDE drive with Windows 7 but I get the following sequences of error messages: " Valid BCP Registry Not Detected." EasyBCD offers to correct the problem. Next error is: "Unfortunately EasyBCD could not automatically detect the drive letter of your boot device... to proceed please enter the letter of your boot drive below.." The only option is the C drive. EasyBCD is now trying to creat the BCD registry from Scratch.... The the final error message "The store import has failed. The requested system device cannot be found."
When I boot into Windows 7 Only 1 drive is seen in the Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Management. The IDE drive. Since this drive is failing, I'll only use XP on this computer, but I would like to change the MBR of the SATA drive back to its original state i.e. just directly booting XP with out the options to chose Windows 7/ Older operating System (XP) at the startup
Is there a way that I can use EasyBCD on the SATA drvie with XP to do this? Thanks.
John
 

Hi, Schnecken. Welcome to NST.
So let me get this straight...you have XP and Win 7 installed (on separate drives from each other), with Win 7 installed on an IDE drive. You no longer want a dual boot...this is where you lost me. :smile: Which OS are you trying to get rid of, first of all? XP or Win 7? If Win 7, it sounds like you could simply throw away the failing drive, and not mess up your XP boot, since it would (in theory) boot by itself, since it is on a separate drive. As it is now, the dual-boot menu is on the IDE drive, not the SATA, since your IDE drive is Win 7, and that is what you're using to manage the dual-boot, not XP. And yes, if you want to, you can use EasyBCD from XP, though if you're getting rid of Win 7, it doesn't sound like there is much point in using EasyBCD any more at all, since it is after all a tool for dual-booting, and you would only have a single OS to boot.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

-Coolname007
 
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Thanks for the quick reply, Yes I want to get rid of Windows 7 on the IDE drive and the drive itself because it's failing. If I disconnect the IDE drive now and boot into XP, I still get the Screen that says something like, "chose which version of windows you want to boot:"

Older version of Windows
Windows 7

Where/what is the file that controls this screen and how do I eliminate it? Thanks
 
It sounds like W7 installed its boot files to the XP drive. (you can verify by seeing if XP is marked "system" in disk management and contains a "boot" folder and the bootmgr program)
If so, you can use EasyBCD "Manage Bootloader" tab and the "Uninstall the Vista Bootloader" radio button then "Write MBR".
This puts the XP boot back on your "system" drive, and is designed for the express purpose of returning to native XP after having used the Vista (or W7) bootmgr.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, Yes I want to get rid of Windows 7 on the IDE drive and the drive itself because it's failing. If I disconnect the IDE drive now and boot into XP, I still get the Screen that says something like, "chose which version of windows you want to boot:"

Older version of Windows
Windows 7

Where/what is the file that controls this screen and how do I eliminate it? Thanks

hmm...Terry is right. Win 7 must have put its boot files on your XP (SATA) drive, since you still get to the dual-boot menu when disconnecting the IDE drive. The file that controls the menu is the BCD file located in your Boot folder of your "system" partition. Though you could manually delete it, you would still have Win 7's bootloader in the MBR, instead of XP's, and so you would no longer be able to boot at all, until you fixed that problem. This problem is a little tricky to workaround. Follow Terry's advice of using EasyBCD to put XP's bootloader in the MBR, before deleting your Win 7 stuff, including the boot files located on your XP partition. Actually, since your Win 7 boot files are on your XP drive, it seems to me it would make more sense to leave the Win 7 bootloader in the MBR, and leave your Win 7 boot files intact, and still use it to boot XP, after you get rid of Win 7. It would be a simple matter to delete the extra entry in EasyBCD's Add/Remove Entries section.

GL and let us know how it goes.

-Coolname007
 
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Thanks, everyone for your suggestions. Here's how I solved the problem. I removed the failing IDE drive (windows 7). I partitioned the SATA drive and custom installed Windows 7 on the new new partition. I installed EasyBCD in Window7. EasyBCD now ran. It showed that 3 choices for booting 1. Windows XP
2. Windows 7 and 3. Windows 7 ( as a corrupted file because the IDE drive was no longer there). I used EasyBCD to delete #3. I can now restore XP as the only boot OS by deleteing Windows 7 (#2).
John
 
Help with dual boot problem

sir, i have installed the XP ( drive c)and win 7 (drive e) dual boot. the problem is upon patching with the genuine patch the booting fails in any os. the error says bootmgr not found. on repairing with the win 7 repair options it says no OS found.

help.
 
I have only one hdd. both the systems are in different drives. XP in drive C and W7 in Drive E. Thenks for the quick reply. waiting for the solution. thanks again.
 
Using your W7 DVD, follow these instructions
(remember "startup repair" needs to be done 3 times probably, if XP has overwritten the W7 boot.
If no W7 is detected, try clicking "next" anyway)
 
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