XP after 7 - Disaster

K

Kochon

Member
Hello everyone, I had Win7 x64 for a while and since it's Win7 and 64 bits, compatibility is mediocre so I decided to dual-boot (something I've done in the fast successfully quite a few times) with XP so I could use my good ol' programs and devices.

My setup is:
500gb SATA hdd in 3 partitions:
- D:System Recovery ( I guess was created when I installed 7)
-E:Windows 7
-F:Windows XP
120gb hdd not in sata (forgot the name here sorry)
C: Data


So what I did is I shrunk my 500GB SATA hard drive and created a new 20gb partition for windows xp, rebooted and installed XP to that partition.

Everything worked well, XP booted no problems there. Then I installed EasyBCD and opened it to be greeted with a message saying the program couldnt find my BCD on any of the drives. I was like WTF.

I popped in my Win 7 disc and did a system repair, which suposedly found a Win7 installation and repaired it. I rebooted.... to Windows XP. But this time I could use easybcd normally and add entries and modify them etc. Then I rebooted, back tp xp again, no bootloader menu.

*EasyBCD says my bootloader is located on C: IDK why, this drive shouldnt be hosting the boot files at all and since im on XP, it says i have to have vista or 7 to change the drive in easybcd*

What should I do I'm totally lost here :frowning:
 
I am running Win7HP64 and Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64 on the same box - no problems. Try to install maybe both windows on different partitions on same C: drive? I had many different settings and Linux/Windows dual boot worked regulated usually by GRUB. It may solve your problem if you install small Ubuntu or Mint partition, Grub should let you boot to all systems automatically... Than if you set up multisystem boot in Windows 7, drop Linux if you don't want it. There is a Chinese program Windows 7 Manager (cheep, fully working trial) - can help to set multiboot as well. I am not a programmer, so be careful! I am just describing what I have done myself... Good luck!
 
Post a Disk Management screenshot (how-to in the sticky if needed)

How on earth did you manage to create a single boot W7 with the OS not being C: ? (or are those the letters as seen from XP only ?)
 
Ok guys I managed to fix my booting partially by unplugging my data hard drive and repairing with the win7 disc. In win7 I installed EasyBCD, added an entry for windows XP (drive X that I chose when I shrunk), and i see the bootloader menu with the XP option, but it fails to boot, and says something about missing or corrupt boot files. I'm not sure what to do here.
Terry60 said:
How on earth did you manage to create a single boot W7 with the OS not being C: ? (or are those the letters as seen from XP only ?)
Click to expand...
You got it, those are the XP letters.


//EDIT//

When I plugged my IDE HDD (Data) drive back, boot failed (I have no idea why it tried to boot from this hard drive, the BIOS is set to boot my SATA first), so I forced the BIOS to boot using the sata hard drive (I can press F8 when I boot and choose the boot device) and went in windows 7 to delete all the boot-related files on the Data hard drive (boot folder, etc) and rebooted, same thing happened (it said boot files are corrupt), so I went back into the BIOS and set the boot sequence to boot the HDD first ( it was set to DVD, then HDD) and voilà, everything works fine now.


I still have a questions though, why does the bios skip to the IDE drive after it tries to boot from the DVD even if the sata hard drive is set to boot prior to the IDE one?
 
Last edited:
When you add the XP entry, let EasyBCD auto-configure. (Don't change the disk letter)
 
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