I am having a very strange problem with my triple boot setup. I am running XP, Vista and Windows 7 on a single hard drive.
My setup is:
Partition 1 (primary)(active/boot) - 1 GB, holds OS boot files
Partition 2 (primary) - XP
Partition 3 (primary) - Vista
Partition 4 (extended)
Partition 5 (logical) - Windows 7
Partition 6 (logical) - Data Storage
Partition 7 (logical) - Documents
Initially, I started with a clean drive (using Diskpart's clean command) and created the partitions using Diskpart. I then did all of the installs and everything went smooth. Upon installing Windows 7, I install Easy BCD and relabel the OS's for the Windows Boot Manager as well as reorder them (XP-Vista-Seven) and change the countdown to 5 seconds. Additionally, I add 2 ISO's to the bootloader - 1 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and 1 for Windows Recovery Environment. These are added and I am able to boot from them both successfully. Initially I set EasyBCD to run them from the disk, but I then decided to run them from memory instead in my troubleshooting attempts - please advise on running from disk vs running from memory.
So everything works fine. Then, after about a day or so, I will go to reboot the system (after having rebooted to each OS successfully multiple times) and find that I can no longer boot to Windows 7 and each time this happens, I also cannot boot to either of the above-mentioned ISOs (it gives me a NeoGrub boot loader is missing error). Windows 7 gives me a winload.exe is missing error. Also, this happened to me twice after leaving the system to run overnight and both times it was installing programs via Steam to the Windows 7 partition, which is a logical partition.
Here are my guesses at what is causing the issue and hopefully someone here can provide some insight:
(As we speak I have a working system, but have not yet installed EasyBCD)
- The first thing I thought was maybe DiskPart's partitioning is shoddy - so I created the partitions for the new setup using the latest version of Parted Magic. Keep in mind in my limited knowledge of computers the fact that Windows 7 is installed to a logical partition may be of consequence.
- I also suspected Diskeeper 12, because I was using all of the advanced settings that prevent fragmentation, but I still don't think that would break a boot.
- The fact that installing programs to the Windows 7 partition (writing files to a logical partition) overnight recreates the issue plus the fact that the Windows 7 boot and added ISO boots (2) are broken simultaneously leads me to believe that EasyBCD is causing the issue...
Also, I am making regular *manual* not scheduled backups of each partitions from Windows 7 via Acronis True Image 13, but I don't think that would cause this issue as I am able to make the backups, reboot and everything still works..
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. B)
Thank you!
My setup is:
Partition 1 (primary)(active/boot) - 1 GB, holds OS boot files
Partition 2 (primary) - XP
Partition 3 (primary) - Vista
Partition 4 (extended)
Partition 5 (logical) - Windows 7
Partition 6 (logical) - Data Storage
Partition 7 (logical) - Documents
Initially, I started with a clean drive (using Diskpart's clean command) and created the partitions using Diskpart. I then did all of the installs and everything went smooth. Upon installing Windows 7, I install Easy BCD and relabel the OS's for the Windows Boot Manager as well as reorder them (XP-Vista-Seven) and change the countdown to 5 seconds. Additionally, I add 2 ISO's to the bootloader - 1 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and 1 for Windows Recovery Environment. These are added and I am able to boot from them both successfully. Initially I set EasyBCD to run them from the disk, but I then decided to run them from memory instead in my troubleshooting attempts - please advise on running from disk vs running from memory.
So everything works fine. Then, after about a day or so, I will go to reboot the system (after having rebooted to each OS successfully multiple times) and find that I can no longer boot to Windows 7 and each time this happens, I also cannot boot to either of the above-mentioned ISOs (it gives me a NeoGrub boot loader is missing error). Windows 7 gives me a winload.exe is missing error. Also, this happened to me twice after leaving the system to run overnight and both times it was installing programs via Steam to the Windows 7 partition, which is a logical partition.
Here are my guesses at what is causing the issue and hopefully someone here can provide some insight:
(As we speak I have a working system, but have not yet installed EasyBCD)
- The first thing I thought was maybe DiskPart's partitioning is shoddy - so I created the partitions for the new setup using the latest version of Parted Magic. Keep in mind in my limited knowledge of computers the fact that Windows 7 is installed to a logical partition may be of consequence.
- I also suspected Diskeeper 12, because I was using all of the advanced settings that prevent fragmentation, but I still don't think that would break a boot.
- The fact that installing programs to the Windows 7 partition (writing files to a logical partition) overnight recreates the issue plus the fact that the Windows 7 boot and added ISO boots (2) are broken simultaneously leads me to believe that EasyBCD is causing the issue...
Also, I am making regular *manual* not scheduled backups of each partitions from Windows 7 via Acronis True Image 13, but I don't think that would cause this issue as I am able to make the backups, reboot and everything still works..
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. B)
Thank you!
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