Screwerd up my Dual Boot

5

5aq1b

Member
This is a bit of a long one so be patient :smile:

Previously I had a dual boot setup with 2 XP's running. One for General Internet use and the other for music production. I have now installed Windows 7 over the General Use instance of XP so now I have Windows 7 and the XP for my music production.

My hard drive is partitioned into 4 drives and looks like this when viewing in My Computer in Windows 7:

C: Windows 7 OS
D: Windows 7 Installs
E: Windows XP Installs
F: Windows XP OS

After Installing Windows 7, the dual boot menu wasn't appearing for me to have a choice to which OS to boot to so I performed the following and added the XP to the Windows 7 boot manager:


1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Type the following to create a boot loader for Windows XP.
bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"
3. Type the following to set the device to where Windows XP is installed. I used D: in this example. Replace it with the drive letter of your XP installation.
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=D:
4. Type the following to set the path.
bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
5. Type the following to add this boot loader to the boot up screen.
bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
6. Reboot the computer.

I'm able to boot from XP cd and go into Recovery console. Once in there i'm presented with:

1: c:\Windows
2: k:\windows

I choose option one and it asks for an admin password. I only ever use one password and it won't let me accept anything, not even a blank one so I leave that. After using the MAP command to distinguish which is the XP OS, i realise that it's the K drive so i can get into option 2. I run fixboot but that has no effect and the only option that is left is fixmbr but the warning message kind of puts me off running it.

Please help! I hope i've explained my problem as much as i can!
 
Ok, it sounds like you went the long-winded route. All you had to do to get your dual-boot working after installing Win 7 was boot into it, install EasyBCD 2.0, and use it to add an Xp entry to the Win 7 BCD. And then your dual-boot would have been working.

But since you ran the "fixboot" command from the XP CD, most likely you are no longer able to get into Win 7 (because you replaced the bootsector code which looks for the "bootmgr" file that Win 7 uses to boot, with the code that looks for the "ntldr" file which XP uses to boot). Can you get into XP?

If so, just install EasyBCD there instead, and perform the following:


  1. Run EasyBCD.
  2. Go to the Add/Remove Entries section.
  3. Delete the current XP entry.
  4. Go to the Windows tab, select ".../NT/XP" in the Type drop-down menu.
  5. Give the new entry a name, and click Add Entry.
  6. Next, go to the Manage Bootloader section.
  7. Run the "Reinstall the Vista bootloader"/Write MBR option.
  8. Reboot, and you should have a dual-boot.

Post back if you have any further difficulties.
 
Coolname007 said:
Ok, it sounds like you went the long-winded route. All you had to do to get your dual-boot working after installing Win 7 was boot into it, install EasyBCD 2.0, and use it to add an Xp entry to the Win 7 BCD. And then your dual-boot would have been working.

But since you ran the "fixboot" command from the XP CD, most likely you are no longer able to get into Win 7 (because you replaced the bootsector code which looks for the "bootmgr" file that Win 7 uses to boot, with the code that looks for the "ntldr" file which XP uses to boot). Can you get into XP?

If so, just install EasyBCD there instead, and perform the following:


  1. Run EasyBCD.
  2. Go to the Add/Remove Entries section.
  3. Delete the current XP entry.
  4. Go to the Windows tab, select ".../NT/XP" in the Type drop-down menu.
  5. Give the new entry a name, and click Add Entry.
  6. Next, go to the Manage Bootloader section.
  7. Run the "Reinstall the Vista bootloader"/Write MBR option.
  8. Reboot, and you should have a dual-boot.

Post back if you have any further difficulties.
Click to expand...

hey mate thanks for your help, however, i can't get into XP. I did run fixboot but it had no effect at all. I still cant get into XP but can still get into Windows 7 so i would really appreciate it if you could follow me through the steps like you have above, but from Windows 7. Thanks!
 
Ok, so the steps are a bit different since you're able to get into Win 7, but not XP:


  1. Install and run EasyBCD 2.0 in Win 7.
  2. Go to the Add/Remove Entries section.
  3. Delete the current XP entry.
  4. Go to the Windows tab, select ".../NT/XP" in the Type drop-down menu.
  5. Give the new entry a name, and click Add Entry.
  6. Accept the offer to auto-configure boot.ini, and all.
  7. Reboot, and you should have a dual-boot.
Lol, follow these steps, and see if it solves the problem. If not, then we'll work on it some more. :wink: BTW, it would help if you said what form of error you're getting when you attempt to boot into XP. It'll help us troubleshoot the problem better.
 
Last edited:
Seems to be working fine now :smile: When booting into xp, all the disks were checked for consistency. When booting back into Windows 7, i was told my copy isn't genuine anymore! lol

You're an absolute legend!
 
Cool. First time I've been told that. :smile:
Let us know if you have any more problems, and we'll do our best to help.

I'm assuming you were still able to get into Win 7, despite that message?

Jake
 
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