strange crash when dual booting Windows 7 and Xp

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

p314

Member
I recently installed Windows XP on my Samsung N150 netbook from USB. I got everything working and installed EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Build 100.

When I start I get the option to boot XP or Windows 7, if i load XP and then restart and load 7, it switches off while loading 7 and restarts. If I select 7 again it offers to Start Windows normally or go into safe mode etc. If I select Start Windows normally it will work this time. Then if i go back to XP i get the same problem, restarts first and then will start under start windows normally.

Basically i can load the same operating system numerous times in a row but if i change operating system it always crashes the first time.

It's not unworkable but it is annoying. Has this happened anyone else?
 
Moved to proper forum - not an EasyBCD bug
(EasyBCD configures your bootloader, it is not the bootloader)

Have you protected W7 from corruption by XP ?
 
p314 said:
When I start I get the option to boot XP or Windows 7, if i load XP and then restart and load 7, it switches off while loading 7 and restarts. If I select 7 again it offers to Start Windows normally or go into safe mode etc. If I select Start Windows normally it will work this time. Then if i go back to XP i get the same problem, restarts first and then will start under start windows normally.
Click to expand...
Yeah, my dad had the same problem when I setup a dual boot on his computer with Vista and XP. It would do the same thing when you go into the other OS. (And before he could boot into either, he would have to switch his hard drive mode in the BIOS from AHCI to ATA, or vice versa) I don't think there's a fix for this issue, though. You'll just have to live with it, unless someone else has something to suggest that may work.
Do you switch OSes often?
 
Sorry for posting in the wrong forum Terry. Yeah I tried the stop xp reg file but it didn't make a difference.

I won't switch OS often Coolname to be honest, so I can live with it. I only put XP on yesterday because I found 7 was a bit slow for the Netbook. I should point out it's the Windows 7 Starter Edition too. I dual booted my last laptop with Vista and XP previously and never had any problems, the main difference this time was that I was installing XP from USB rather than CD.

Although the drive labels were a bit odd on Windows 7, it came partitioned into a C and D drive where they were each 66Gb and the C drive had the Windows folders etc. When i installed XP it was labelling these drives E and F with C being a one gig partition which contains the boot files for Window 7 (though i must confess, I'm new to 7 so this could be standard)
 
i have windows 7 pro, and was installing xp. The way i got the loader working is installed the loader before i installed the Windows XP pro. if you want a win7 repair disc.iso, i can upload it for you.

Hope that helps
 
Standard W7 install has a 100Mb partition unlettered, labelled "System Reserved", containing the boot files. It's to allow the Windows partition to be encrypted (though why they'd bother with W7 Starter is a puzzle, afaik it doesn't come with bitlocker !)
Also, if you bought the PC with W7 pre-installed, the OEM will probably have built their own recovery/reset facilities into an anonymous partition, which XP is now calling C:
You can remove the C: partition letter in XP Disk Management to avoid confusion if you like.
Disk letters are just registry entries in the running system, so there's no reason why 2 systems should see them alike, unless you take steps to arrange it yourself when you do the installations.
 
Thanks HaxGurl but when you install XP won't that overwrite the Windows 7 boot loader? To get it working anyway I had to install EasyBCD on the Windows 7 side so I don't think it would make a difference. Thanks anyway though.

Thanks for the info Terry, i'm not that taken with W7 starter really
 
I should probably given the full specs; 1gb of RAM, 160GB hard drive, Intel Atom N450 1.66 GHz Processor
 
Well, this is a known MS issue.

It happens for a LOT of people with 4GB RAM and 32-bit operating systems. Usually, I advise dropping that down to 3GB and it starts to work.

In your case: no clue what you should try next..!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top