Problem with MBR

andreasbalzer

New Member
Hi!
We have a serious problem with our computer and hope you can help us.
Our computer has Windows Vista Home Premium (Harddisk 1, Partition C) and Windows XP (Harddisk 1, Parition D)

We installed easybcd and created the record for XP (named Windows XP), set that manually to letter D

Rebooted, we saw Windows XP and Windows Vista in the list. Vista works, XP didn't. It complained about missing NTLDR.

So we did http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP "If you get a message about Missing NTLDR when you select Windows from the boot menu, download these files and extract them to the root of the drive letter that EasyBCD shows Windows XP as booting from."

Rebooted, didn't work.
After that we have done the things in "Automatically Creating Boot.ini"
We selected D, and then named the first one Windows XP and the second one Windows XP.

Now we have the following scenario:
screen 1:
Windows XP -> screen2
Windows Vista -> works

screen2:
Windows XP -> complains about an added harddrive without XP
Windows XP ->"nt detect d" -> that's all we see.. :-/

My question is:
1) what to do to get it working right?
2) what to do to remove all that bootloader screens again and just use Vista on C?

Thanks for any answer.
Andreas
 
Hi Andreas, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

In answer to your question: your boot.ini isn't properly configured.

EasyBCD | Tools | Edit Legacy Entries
This will open the boot.ini file for you to edit.

In http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP, you can find the steps on how to determine the correct numbers for your partition in boot.ini:

As of EasyBCD 1.52 however, there is an easy way to get your Windows XP boot.ini file up and running properly.

EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | Linux/BSD. At the bottom of the EasyBCD window you will find a list of the various drives/partitions available on your PC, ordered according to the physical disk layout and labeled with both the filesystem-type and size for quick identification. Once you've identified the drive that contains your Windows XP installation, use the "drive" value that EasyBCD shows in that list as the "a" in rdisk(a). For the partition(b) value, you'll have to take the number that EasyBCD shows as the partition number, and add one to it.
So if in EasyBCD you have Drive 1 -> Partition 2; you're boot.ini would contain multi(0)rdisk(1)disk(0)partition(3).

Microsoft has provided some documentation on editing boot.ini under Windows XP, 2000, and 2003; however, you may find these instructions by Victor Laurie or this explanation of boot.ini by "The Starman" to be a more complete and useful resource on this matter.

Once your boot.ini file is ready, save your changes and reboot. Select the entry you created earlier for Windows XP from the Vista bootloader, and if you configured the boot.ini file correctly, it should now work.

Good luck!
 
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