Problems with dual boot

Daz333

Member
Hi all,

I have a 500GB hard drive which has been split 50/50 into two partitions. C and D. On drive C I have Windows XP installed and on drive D I have Windows 7 installed.

I wish to dual boot but as both these operating systems were installed onto the C and D using a seperate image of each install.

When I boot up my machine, XP will load up but Windows 7 is installed on the D drive, yet I don't get any boot menu upon startup. If anyone can help me solve this I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks
 
Hello Daz and Welcome to NeoSmart Technologies!

You need to get yourself the latest build of EasyBCD 2.0 from here. After the install you will have to go into BCD Backup/Repair. There use teh option to Re-create/repair the boot files. This will create teh BCD files for you. After that you will have to go under the Add entry to make sure both XP and Win7 are listed. If not add the one you need. Make sure you select the default OS you want as well.

Remember as well that the entries for the drives are going to be as they appear in that OS. So if Win7 sees itself as C:\ then that will be the drive letter to select and XP will then be D:\ as that is what Win7 sees the XP drive as.
 
Hey Mak 2.0!

Thanks for the welcome :smile: and thankyou also for your prompt reply. I have followed the instructions outlined in your post above and can happily say that I have managed to fix it! :smile:

I added the XP operating system as the D drive after repairing the boot files (WIndows 7 is set to drive C and Windows XP is set to drive D). After restarting I was greeted with the boot menu and can boot between Windows 7 and XP. Thankyou so much for your help with this :smile:

Just one other quick question on this matter. When I look in the 'View Settings' area in Easy BCD, it displays Windows 7 as entry 1 and Windows XP as entry 2, but they are both listed as drive C. Shouldn't one of them (WIndows XP entry) display as the D drive?

Thanks :smile:
 
The default MS design behaviour for dual booting XP from Vista/7 is to copy the XP boot files to the Vista/7 root (the "system" partition), hence C:. the copy of boot.ini in C: is what locates the XP partition, not the BCD entry.
With EasyBCD 2.0 from build 107, there has been a newly implemented feature which uses a Neosmart custom version of NTLDR, which was implemented to enable multiple XP entries to be added to the BCD (not possible by MS design). These individual custom entries point to the XP partition(s) in the same way as for multiple Vista/7 entries, but unless you have multiple XPs the default behaviour follows the traditional MS design and everything is kept in the "system" drive.
 
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