upgrading mobo,cpu,ram killed my multi-bootability

bonjonno

Member
I have had a succesful tri-boot system for the last 6 months thanks to EasyBCD. My main OS is Win7 on an SSD. On a multi partitioned HD I also have a Win7 backup and XP Pro. 10 days ago I upgraded my mobo, CPU and RAM because the old stuff was aging and odd things were occasionally happening. The system booted right up as usual and I've worked without an incident (SSD Win7). Yesterday I tried to boot XP to use a program that doesn't work in W7. I got my first bsod of the new build. I rechecked my EasyBCD settings and tried again. Now I get the corrupted NTLDR message when trying to boot XP. If I try to boot to the backup W7 (on the HD) I get a bsod after the logo starts loading. I went thru all the motions again in EasyBCD for setting up a multi boot system, but the results are still no good. Any ideas? Thanks.
 
If you get a BSOD, it's not a bootloader issue. It means Windows isn't configured to recognize and boot from the hardware currently installed.

I'll bet it's because AHCI is on.
 
AHCI is on. The first thing I tried was turning it off, but same deal. XP is what I really need to get into, and that is not giving BSOD. It is telling me to insert installation disc because of a corrupt or missing ntldr. I don't want to take the chance of messing up my good W7 on the ssd by tring a repair of XP. BTW, I had to recativate W7 with the new hardware, but that went w/o a hitch.
 
When there are major hardware changes, as indicated above, to 'keep' your existing XP installation the recommended procedure is to boot from an updated XP CD/DVD and to do a repair install. If you are lucky, the updated CD/DVD will include the latest drivers for the hardware and update things accordingly - and then start. Else, a complete reinstallation is required.

Also, XP did not come as AHCI compatible - the drivers must be a part of the updated CD/DVD
 
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Thanks for the help. Since my last entry I have progressed somewhat. Turned off AHCI. Disconnected the SSD and used the W7 installation disc to fix the HD W7 backup. Installed all the necessary new drivers. Booted XP in safe mode and installed drivers. Booted XP with no problem. Rehooked up SSD and booted to its version of W7 which is what I normally use. A bit slower now w/ AHCI turned off. XP still won't even start to boot saying there's a problem with NST/easyldr1 (it may say NST/ntldr). But the hard drive's ver of W7 boots fine. In fact I'm on it now. Still puzzled...OK here's the latest. I found NST folders on all my OS drives and ntldr files on the root of every OS drive. I copied each ntldr file into its appropriate NST folder. Now XP boots up; I'm in it now. Still don't think it'll work w/ the BIOS SATA set to AHCI instead of IDE. That's a bit of a bummer because the SSD is much faster with AHCI. Oh well, thanks for sticking with me on this.
 
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