Thanks again. Yes in disk management in XP, drive C (XP) is flagged as System and I can see the Boot folder as well as the bootmgr file in the root; however I cannot see Winload in the System32 folder for drive C or any other OS drive. I thought I had my folder options set to show everything. Being that you only said, "copy the bootmgr program from the W8 root into the W7 root (renaming the W7 version to bootmgr7 or something else first," maybe I don't need to be concerned about the fact that I can't see winload anywhere as Vista and Win7 are loading fine it's got to be there and no doubt hidden. I'm supposed to be Admin. I don't know if there's any higher level than admin....On the other hand, using a search utility called "everything," winload.exe shows up in D Win7,G Win8.1,M Vista X86,N VistaX64 , and O Win8. So XP is the only system that does not have it. I guess that's what you said. I haven't been seeing it because it's nested inside long named folders like winsxs/amd64....environment.... It's odd that it seems to show like 20 times in each OS. This is uncharted territory for me.
---------- Post added at 02:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:52 PM ----------
It seems to me that the only way I'm going to get Win8 flagged as system in disk management is if I'm already booted into Win8. Working from XP, neither Win7 nor Win8 is flagged as system so boomgr is not going to be available to view or copy. Did you mean for me to boot into Win7 to do the copy?
---------- Post added at 02:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:37 PM ----------
No, in Win7, XP is still flagged as system. Is this the default OS as set in EasyBCD. Will it help to use EasyBCD to change the default to Win7 while booted into Win7? Do I need to save the new configuration? Will marking Win8 as default from Win7 make boomgr in Win8 avaiable from here?
---------- Post added at 05:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------
I forgot to let you know, you said yesterday, "You've fixed the boot files with a W7 DVD (hence you can't boot W8)." It's true that I used the W7 DVD 5 or 6 times which brought back the menu. I don't know if I also metnioned that, after the two Win8 entries failed to boot i used a W8 DVD and or Win8 Repair Disk and a W8.1 DVD on the respective partitions several times as well. In each case I went from automatic to advanced options. I have no idea if that made any changes after the fact or not. I don't think that I intentionally used the W7 disk on the W8 partitions (didn't select them from the list of 6 OS's), at least I would have had no reason to do this as the W8 disks were lying on the desk next to me.
---------- Post added at 09:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:00 PM ----------
Is this sequence similar to what you have in mind?
Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Help Forums I suppose I could copy from Win 7 to Win8. I have EasyBCD insstalled on every OS. Is that a problem? Can I edit my bootloade with he EasyBCD that is installed on any OS?
---------- Post added at 10:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 PM ----------
I just got back into Win8.1 using startuip recovery from the DVD. Funny that it said that Windows was NOT able to fix the problems again even though when I rebooted and chose the menu option it went right in. Don't know why it didn't work last night.