Vista/Win 7 RC Dual Boot DVD Effects

Y

Y888

Active Member
Greetings. Well, I finally got Win 7 RC installed, by just giving up doing a Vista upgrade and just doing a straight install. Here's the setup:

On the primary disk, two partitions of interest:

C: Vista
M: (from the standpoint of Vista) Win 7 RC

If I just boot the system with the Win 7 RC install disk NOT in the drive, I go *straight* to Vista -- no OS choices are offered.

If I boot the system with the Win 7 RC install disk IN the drive, I go *straight* to the installed Win 7 RC. Again, no OS choices are offered.

When Win 7 is running, the Vista drive shows up as drive E:

Using BCDEasy 2.0 b63, I checked and saw only the entry for Win 7. I created a Vista entry pointing at E: (I also tried C).

Didn't make any difference. No matter what I do, no OS choices are offered whether the Win 7 install disk is in the drive or not. But if the disk is in, I get Win 7. If the disk is out, I get Vista. I am not responding to the "press any key to boot off of CD/DVD" prompt in the boot sequence.

Any clues? Thanks!

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Hi Y888, welcome to NST.
Has W7 installed with a "secret" unlettered boot partition.
Check in disk management which partition is marked "system"
If it's Vista, boot Vista and create an entry for W7 pointing at M:\
 
No hidden partition. But the latest test results showed that if the disk is in the DVD player, I get the OS choice menu and both choices work correctly. If the disk is not in the DVD player, I'm now getting the choice menu, but only the Vista (C) choice works. The Win 7 (current M) choice fails when selected. Other disks available in easybcd are:
C D J K L.
 
Thanks. Here you go (both EasyBCD and Disk Management run from the Vista OS side):

Code: 
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default                 {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
displayorder            {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
                        {abd77bee-5447-11dd-8a45-005056c00008}
toolsdisplayorder       {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout                 5
resume                  No

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Vista
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {e8709fb7-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
nx                      OptOut

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {abd77bee-5447-11dd-8a45-005056c00008}
device                  partition=M:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Win 7 RC
osdevice                partition=M:
systemroot              \Windows
 

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Reboot, enter your BIOS, and put your Vista disk first in the boot sequence. Then attempt to boot again (into Win 7). If that works, reboot once more, and attempt to boot into Vista. They should both work.
 
I moved the disk (which indeed contains both Vista (C) and Win 7 (M) to the top of the boot sequence (which is where it was prior to my changing it for the initial Win 7 install attempts).

This didn't make any difference. The Vista choice continues to work, the Win 7 choice continues to fail (bad signature).
 
Perform startup repair on the Windows 7 installation from the Windows 7 DVD. Delete the old entry that isnt working.
 
Windows Boot Manager

Recent hardware or software change ... blah blah blah

Press ENTER for boot menu

File: \windows\system32\winload.exe

Status: 0xc0000428

Info: Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file

Addendum:

Just tried the boot disk in Repair Mode. Repair on the Win 7 partition found no errors. Diag details showed no problems at all, and claimed successful boot.

So, the problem is still a mystery ...
 
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It would appear you have a corrupt winload.exe, and Startup Repair can't fix it for whatever reason. Try moving the one located at /Windows/system32 on your Win 7 partition to a safe location temporarily (as a backup), and then placing a copy of the Vista one in the same location as the original Win 7 one, and see if that helps. :wink: If it doesn't, then I suppose you might want to move the original one back, as I'm not sure if there's any differences between the Vista and Win 7 versions.

EDIT: And you may also want to try running Startup Repair again on the Win 7 installation with all but the problem HDD disconnected.
 
Does this really make sense in this situation? Remember, if I place the install disk in the DVD reader then reboot, I will get both OS choices and they both *work*. It's only when the disk is *not* in the DVD reader that I get both choices and the Win 7 choice fails.
 
Y888 said:
Does this really make sense in this situation? Remember, if I place the install disk in the DVD reader then reboot, I will get both OS choices and they both *work*. It's only when the disk is *not* in the DVD reader that I get both choices and the Win 7 choice fails.
Click to expand...
Yes, because I believe when you boot with the install disk *in* the DVD reader, you're not actually using the winload.exe on the W7 partition...you're using the one on the DVD, and so the one on your HDD is definitely corrupt, and needs to be either replaced or fixed with Startup Repair (assuming it can even repair a corrupt winload.exe).

EDIT: And did you read the edit in my last post?
 
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Hmmm. Don't see why it should be corrupt, but I'll give it a try tomorrow and let you know. I keep wondering if what's actually happening is that winload is trying to find a system on the wrong disk and so fails. In other words, confusion between the various disk lettering in the boot Vista vs. boot 7 cases?
 
Y888 said:
Hmmm. Don't see why it should be corrupt, but I'll give it a try tomorrow and let you know. I keep wondering if what's actually happening is that winload is trying to find a system on the wrong disk and so fails. In other words, confusion between the various disk lettering in the boot Vista vs. boot 7 cases?
Click to expand...
Ok, I'm not 100% sure about this (its hard to be with any Windows thing), but it would seem likely that the winload.exe (HDD-not DVD-version) is not aware of anything other than the files needed to load Vista/Win 7, and can only interact with stuff in its own directory (i.e. Windows/system32). And hence, different drive letters wouldn't make a difference at all. Besides, I need to mention that drive letters are specific to the booted system, and have no relevance to any other system when it is booted.
bootmgr basically causes winload.exe to execute its code, I think, after telling it where to find it via the BCD. winload.exe is actually the last step in the boot process. But if winload.exe has corrupt code for some reason or another, then it can not load Vista (or in this case, Win 7)...hence the error message. :wink:
 
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