My system was XP Pro, 32-bit only. I installed a new drive with Windows 7 64-bit. I installed easyBCD 2.2.117. Windows 7 is on Drive 0 and is intended to be my default system. XP is on Drive 3. After installation, I could boot into either system. But, while working in the XP system, the dreaded Microsoft shield showed up indicating security updates were awaiting installation. I dutifully complied, and KB981852 and KB956572 installed and then indicated I needed to restart. When I restarted, the dual-boot screen appeared as usual, and I selected the Windows XP drive to boot. It completely locks up with a black screen! I have to hit the reset button to get the system to reboot. It will boot to the Windows 7 disk, but I can't boot into the Windows XP disk with *any* option... safe mode or last working state or ANYTHING.
I tried restoring the MBR from an Acronis backup, but this did not fix the problem. When I restored the entire Drive image, everything began working OK again. But, of course, MS was nagging me to install the updates. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, I tried again. Same problem. If I install the MS updates which apparently plant something in the startup sequence to finish the installation, it clobbers something in my dual-boot configuration.
From the W7 environment I can see the XP drive, and ntldr, boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM, and AUTOEXEC.BAT are all there. I can't tell what is getting clobbered, but there seems to be a serious interaction with having to restart after the MS updates which apparently require some post processing on restart have occurred.
What to do? What to look for?
I tried restoring the MBR from an Acronis backup, but this did not fix the problem. When I restored the entire Drive image, everything began working OK again. But, of course, MS was nagging me to install the updates. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, I tried again. Same problem. If I install the MS updates which apparently plant something in the startup sequence to finish the installation, it clobbers something in my dual-boot configuration.
From the W7 environment I can see the XP drive, and ntldr, boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM, and AUTOEXEC.BAT are all there. I can't tell what is getting clobbered, but there seems to be a serious interaction with having to restart after the MS updates which apparently require some post processing on restart have occurred.
What to do? What to look for?