I'm hoping somebody can help me out of this hole that I've dug for myself.
Here's where I'm coming from:
Started with a 1TB raid 1, the first 250GB running XP and the rest partitioned for storage. Yesterday I bought Win7, backed up the data on the storage partition and deleted it. Then I used gparted to resize the XP partition to 100GB and moved it back on the disk to start at 200GB and end at 300GB. Then I booted from the Win7 disk and told it to install to the first 200GB on the disk. I didn't choose any custom settings here, just pointed it at the first 200GB and told it to install. (First mistake?)
Now, everything with the install went great. I've spent a day loading drivers and apps and all is good. It never occurred to me that Win7 would botch a dual boot with XP... So I go to boto into XP to grab some application settings, etc...ntoskernel.exe is missing or corrupt.
Weird, but no problem right? I grab a copy of ntoskernel.exe from windows\driver cache and replace the copy in windows\system32 and try again...same error. Fast forward through a bunch of forum and blog trolling for information...and I installed EasyBCD. After fooling around with EasyBCD I no longer get the ntoskernel.exe, there is just a very fast flash of something about boot.ini that I can't read fast enough and the PC reboots.
I feel like I'm close but can't quite work this out. I'd like to be able to dual boot XP and Win7 for the nearterm future with the goal of eventually deleting the XP partition completely and reclaiming that space.
Here's what I've currently got:
I feel like I need to get the boot manager off of partition D and onto C so that I can get rid of the XP install at some point. I followed instructions on copying over the boot manager to the Win7 partition:
1. Copy and paste bootmgr and pale yellow boot folder from existing
system partition to C:
(You get a message bcd is in use and can't be copied - skip it and copy
the rest.)
2. Open an elevated cmd and type : bcdedit /export C:\Boot\bcd {enter}
3. In Disk Management , mark C Active. Reboot to hand system status to C.
Previous to Win7, when booted into XP the windows install was on the C drive, now that partition is D in Win7 but I've never been about to boot XP again to see what drive letter XP thinks it is now. When booted into Win7, the 7 install is C and the partition with XP is D.
Ideally I'd like to have XP think its on drive C when booted in XP and have Win7 think its on drive C when booted into Win7, but I'll take almost anything at this point.
Any ideas are welcome, thank you.
Here's where I'm coming from:
Started with a 1TB raid 1, the first 250GB running XP and the rest partitioned for storage. Yesterday I bought Win7, backed up the data on the storage partition and deleted it. Then I used gparted to resize the XP partition to 100GB and moved it back on the disk to start at 200GB and end at 300GB. Then I booted from the Win7 disk and told it to install to the first 200GB on the disk. I didn't choose any custom settings here, just pointed it at the first 200GB and told it to install. (First mistake?)
Now, everything with the install went great. I've spent a day loading drivers and apps and all is good. It never occurred to me that Win7 would botch a dual boot with XP... So I go to boto into XP to grab some application settings, etc...ntoskernel.exe is missing or corrupt.
Weird, but no problem right? I grab a copy of ntoskernel.exe from windows\driver cache and replace the copy in windows\system32 and try again...same error. Fast forward through a bunch of forum and blog trolling for information...and I installed EasyBCD. After fooling around with EasyBCD I no longer get the ntoskernel.exe, there is just a very fast flash of something about boot.ini that I can't read fast enough and the PC reboots.
I feel like I'm close but can't quite work this out. I'd like to be able to dual boot XP and Win7 for the nearterm future with the goal of eventually deleting the XP partition completely and reclaiming that space.
Here's what I've currently got:
Also, my boot.ini on the XP partition (D):
Additional notes:
I feel like I need to get the boot manager off of partition D and onto C so that I can get rid of the XP install at some point. I followed instructions on copying over the boot manager to the Win7 partition:
1. Copy and paste bootmgr and pale yellow boot folder from existing
system partition to C:
(You get a message bcd is in use and can't be copied - skip it and copy
the rest.)
2. Open an elevated cmd and type : bcdedit /export C:\Boot\bcd {enter}
3. In Disk Management , mark C Active. Reboot to hand system status to C.
Previous to Win7, when booted into XP the windows install was on the C drive, now that partition is D in Win7 but I've never been about to boot XP again to see what drive letter XP thinks it is now. When booted into Win7, the 7 install is C and the partition with XP is D.
Ideally I'd like to have XP think its on drive C when booted in XP and have Win7 think its on drive C when booted into Win7, but I'll take almost anything at this point.
Any ideas are welcome, thank you.
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