Problem With Dual Boot Win7 + XP (XP First)
Jan 6, 2010
Complaint: When starting computer, boot manager does not show Win 7
Symptoms: Previously, my system was running XP 32 bit and Vista 32 without any problems. After installing Vista, I found it quite easy to use EASYBCD to properly configure the boot manager to have XP as the default system, and Vista as the optional system further down the line. The two OSs are set on separate partitions of the same disk. Note however that the disk is actually a RAID 1 array.
A few days ago I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, as a clean install after wiping out the Vista partition. Installation proceeded without difficulty, but when I tried to make the necessary changes to the boot file via EASYBCD, the XP partition was not listed. So I mounted the partition and labeled it as X:, and went back to EASYBCD to add XP to the X: partition.
But after restarting, the boot manager menu listed:
(1)Older version of Windows
(2)Vista boot loader
When I choose (1), a new table comes up that lists only XP. If chosen, XP starts without difficulty.
When I choose (2), I get an error screen. I will post the exact error message momentarily.
I thought maybe the boot needed to be repaired, so I booted off the Win 7 DVD and instructed it to fix my computer. But after running a scan, a window popped up telling me that there was no problem to fix. I then restarted the system, leaving the DVD in the drive, but when prompted, I allowed the system to continue loading instead of striking a key to boot from the Win 7 DVD.
Instead of the boot menu above, the new menu was:
(1) Windows 7
(2) Windows XP
This is exactly what I told EASYBCD to do! But I can only get to this menu if I have the Win 7 DVD in the drive when I start up the computer! Note that I am NOT booting off the disk; the disk is simply sitting in the drive! When the bios checks the drive for a disk and sees one is present, it asks me if I want to boot from it (press any key) or not (do nothing). Whenever I do nothing, I get the right boot menu!
I have spent many, many hours and scoured the forums, but I have yet to see this problem described.
I will post a screen image of my disk management shortly. I will also post a copy of the EASYBCD screen image.
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Nov 12, 2009
As currently configured, XP is on drive C:, Win 7 was added to drive E:, and the system is currently run as a dual boot. Attempting to boot without the XP drive present will yield a "NTLDR is missing" error very early in the boot process.
I have already tried the following:
(1) I moved the hidden Windows Boot Manager files (bootmgr as well as the associated Boot folder) from the XP drive root to the Win 7 drive root.
(2) After physically removing the XP drive, I rebooted to the Win 7 installation DVD, and used the "Repair Your Computer" option to pull up the "Recovery Tools". Then, using the command prompt utility, ...
(3) I attempted to write a new boot sector to the Windows 7 disk using the command: Bootrec /fixboot, - that yields an error though. The Bootrec /fixmbr claimed success, but ultimately did not make Win 7 drive bootable.
I had to reconnect drive C: just to boot into Win 7 again to write this. I do have files backed up, but to format and reinstall files would take many hours beyond just the time to transfer 400 GB of data, since I have dozens of purchased applications that need to be freshly reinstalled and validated as well. Basically I want my E: drive now to be my boot drive while the C: drive is reformatted and used for general storage.
Any idea how to make my Win 7 drive bootable? Do I need a partition program that is more adept at creating a viable boot sector, or is that even the problem?
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Oct 30, 2009
I have XP (x86) installed on one partition.
Last night I installed Windows 7 (x64) on a separate partition.
Anytime I had tried this in the past, using Vista, it always detected the Windows XP partition, and gave me a boot menu with "Earlier Version of Windows" option to boot to.
This is not so with Windows 7.
How can I get the boot menu to show both options, to boot to XP or to Windows 7?
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Sep 24, 2009
I was having win 7 RTM and i tried to installl OSx86 in second hard disk
after few failure i successfully installed OSx86 in my secondary had disk now the problem is that i cant boot win 7
i changed boot order i tried windows 7 disk repair
but both failed
im getting some Boot mldr missing...
Actually even OSx86 is not booting i get OSx86 boot screen with two hard disk to select if i select windows disk it still says the same Boot mldr missing.
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Jan 23, 2009
Anybody want to share their experience installing and booting OSX and Windows 7 in a dual boot, single drive, setup? I'm experienced in partitioning, etc. My first try was not sucessful, but I didn't really give it a chance. I had OSX running, but I couldn't get the dual boot sorted out and I ruined my Windows installation a couple times...gave up.
Just looking to see if threre are any people out there that can steer me a little.
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Nov 4, 2009
First of all I had Windows 7 ultimate and 1 partition. Then I made a second partition, and installed Win XP to it. Win XP wiped out the Windows 7 boot option. I used my Windows 7 disc to repair startup and my hope was to have dual-boot on my hdd. BUT... Windows 7 couldnt repair my startup, cause I just bought a new graphic card and when Im tryin to boot from dvd it says NO!! >< because of the hardware changes >< so I have 2 partitions now and only #2 is working --> the XP
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Nov 10, 2009
I have a new PC with Windows 7 pre-installed. My old PC died, but I have the hard drive that has WinXP loaded on it.
The old drive has two partitions, one for data and one for the WinXP OS. The OLD drive WinXP OS partition is identified as G-drive under Windows 7. NTLDR is located in the OLD drive now identified as the F-drive partition under Windows 7.
I've used EasyBCD to add the old drive and have the drive set as F for the WinXP boot loader. When I start the PC, I have the choice of Windows 7 or WinXP, but when I select WinXP, the system hangs and won't let me proceed. I can only boot under Windows 7.
I've obviously made an error somewhere....thoughts/suggestions?
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Dec 3, 2009
I want to set up a dual boot system with 2 times Win 7. One system with Office software and related, the other with multimedia software like Photoshop etc. My experience with Xp systems is that that postpones the unavoidable clutter that Windows creates on a system disk. Also, I found it convenient to be able to access the system disk of the respective one system from the other one that is booted at the moment (backup, repair,...).
Now I want to do that for my new PC, too. I have a new PC with one 250GB HDD for the two OSs, and two 250GB HDDs (RAID0) for data. How do I go about installing the two OSs on two partitions? My first tries showed that I need one 100MB partition for the boot manager; two partitions of 80GB each are for the two Windows 7 systems, and the remaining partition for the application software (paging file will be on the RAID HDD).
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Mar 10, 2009
I am currently the Operations Lead for a BF2 Modification called Project Reality, which is quite a popular game, but am having a few problems at the moment.
I installed Windows 7 - build 7000 when it first came out, as a dual boot, I liked it so much I carried out a full install and removed XP.
Everything worked fine up until a week ago, where I can now longer launch the game I develop ....lol, as it runs of the BF2 exe that means it is reliant when in multiplayer mode on Punkbuster, from evenbalance.com (an anti cheat programme).
This occurred I think when I carried out a Windows 7 Update. Looking into it I now know that Windows 7 and Punbuster are not compatible, and the statement from evenbalance.com, is that they will not support a Beta OS, which is fine I understand.
Therefore I decided to create a partition in Windows 7, assign it a drive letter, and then reboot it to install XP on that new drive.
All goes fine until XP does it initial reboot to continue its install, and it comes up with
"Disk error press ctl / alt / del to restart" ............. and thats it - nothing from then on in.
I had to use the Windows 7 DVD to "repair" the OS and then get it back on.
So for some reason I can not create a dual boot from within this OS.
Can anyone advise if I am doing something wrong here, or if mentioned before pass me a link on ?
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Oct 22, 2009
Has anybody successfully dual-booted windows 7 with windows 7?
I'd like 2 totally different set ups but it seems to not work
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Feb 21, 2010
Current config: AMD PHenom X4 processor; 8gb ram; Nvidia graphics card; 2-1tb hard drives; 1 250gb hard drive; 1 160gb hard drive; 2 dvd-RW drives. Now booting into Win 7 32 bit. Want to set up a second boot with XP Pro. I tried installing XP on the 160gb drive (H, reconnected C; D: E: drives, used Easy BCD to setup dual boot. Won't boot to XP. Also would like to set up the 250gb drive for Ubuntu.
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Aug 17, 2009
I've been going at this all day searching, trial and error, and it's all very frustrating at this point.
I use a custom bootloader for my vista 64 to trick it to be activated (not sure your policy on discussing this). But now I wanted to try Windows 7 since it has been released in the RC status (because I had aquaintances try 7000 beta, and no one liked it). So I want to have it on my machine to tinker with and test it out.
I ended up taking my 300GB drive, and removing about 60GB from it, creating a logical partition, formatting it, then booted into the Windows 7 dvd I have. (win 7 - 7600)
Firstly, it takes about a couple minutes just to load the files. Then once it finally gets to the splash* screen and the cursor appears.....it takes about 5-10minutes for the "install" window to appear which seems VERY odd since my machine is VERY fast.
It takes quite a bit of time to accomplish installing from loading to finished (30minutes maybe), and by then it overwrites my bootloader for my VISTA installation (so its not activated anymore), and it shows WIN 7, and below that Vista 64. Read more at the forum...
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Nov 28, 2009
I have 2 hard drives with XP installed on 1 and then i installed windows 7 on the other. On bootup i get the option to select the operating systems.
Now i want to only have windows 7 and remove XP completely so that i can format the hard drive with xp on and use as backup.
The problem is that when i switch boot sequence to boot off the win 7 hdd first, i get BOOTMGR is missing. I have tried the startup repair from the win 7 cd but it also fails with an error saying Missing boot manager.
If i switch back to use XP hdd as 1st boot device, i get the OS options screen again and can boot into both without issue.
Does anyone have any idea of how i can get rid of XP and boot with only windows 7 as first boot device?
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Jan 4, 2010
I originally had win XP installed in my computer... I upgraded to Windows 7 through the internet download process.
A while after I found this tutorial and decided that I wanted to dual boot XP (I have the original XP disc) in my machine. When I tried installing XP and it got to the point where it need to restart to continue the installation, it never proceeds. It just stays black with a cursor display.
When I try to restart the computer without the XP disc so I can try and get into 7 it also doesnt boot up and just gives me the cursor blinking.
Any idea what happened?
Ive tried reinstalling XP many times without any success.
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May 4, 2009
So until installing the RC, I upgraded to all of the previous builds. That kept my boot settings and whatnot. But seince doing a clean install (and doing an Easy Transfer) I lost my version of BCD. To fix that, I got the newest version. I was able to get it to add an entry for XP to the bootloader, but still cannot boot into XP. I don't know what the heck the problem is. Now, I have it all screwed up so that I boot by default into "Windows Vista" which is actually Windows 7. Any thoughts?
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Feb 15, 2009
I have a simple xp 32 computer and would like to dual boot (from a partition) with windows 7. my problem seems to lie in whether i have enable my usb to be bootable as a dvd install of windows 7. it seems very complicated, and i am interested in figuring out whether it was possible to simply create the partition (with gpart) than in windows mount windows 7 and when it asks where it wants to be installed, I would than chose my new partition.
I don't know... (don't want to screw up)
I hope this makes sense...
I really would like to try widows 7, and any help would be very much appreciated .
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Jan 31, 2010
I am running Windows 7 64bit. My printer only has 32 bit drivers. Is there any way I can get a windows 64 bit 32bit printer emulator? If not then I have to install 32bit Windows XP on my computer as well. Now after I partition my hard drive, will I be able to get that space back? For ex. I make a partition 50GB for windows XP, Will I be able to put that 50GB back into my windows 7 partition if I delete Windows XP?
Will the 2 partitions be able to communicate with each other? Like will I be able to take files from the partition that Windows XP is on if i'm logged on my Windows 7 and vice versa. Will I also need to install antivirus and things for Windows XP? One last question... I have 9MB unallocated(lol) How do i get that back into my hard drive?
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Jul 29, 2009
I started out with Vista 32 Ultimate installed on my machine. I created a second partition on that system drive , and left my data drive alone and installed Win 7 64 Ultimate RC on the new partition. The system boots to win7 with no boot menu to pick vista from, any ideas?
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Jun 28, 2009
I have Windows 7 RC1 installed for some time, dual-booting with Windows XP. And that worked like a charm. But a couple of days ago I installed Ubuntu on the Windows XP partition (after formatting it with ext3, of course). But the thing is, I have been trying to boot into my dear Windows 7 ever since, with no success.
It didn't show in the boot manager, so I changed the menu.lst in Ubuntu. Thus it can be seen, but to no avail, as it does not work. I have tryed fixing it with the Windows 7 installation DVD, but it did not work. And I really ran out of ideas; also I would like to keep both my OS-es as they are (all data), if that's possible somehow.
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Jun 2, 2009
I did a partition, i ran the XP setup, chose the partition, started install, then it copied the files, then it had to restart, it restarted.. but its not moving for the next setup screen, it just jams on the load, "Press any key to boot from CD ... "
It is been there like over 30 minutes now, maybe someone can help me with this problem, thank you in advance.
PS. I restarted it also and then booted it again, and it seems it did not copy those files.. the partition was still empty.
PPS. And as it seems.. it does not run not at all now, i took out the XP cd and it does not load Windows 7 Also.
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Nov 3, 2009
I Cleaned installed Windows 7 (64bit) to dual boot with my already existing Windows XP SP3 (32bit). Everything is great and life is fantastic!
I'm ready to remove XP now.
Any suggestions on the steps to follow, and remove XP, without screwing up my fast, great and fully working Windows 7.
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Nov 4, 2009
I have Windows 7 64-bit and Windows XP installed on 2 different disks. Unfortunately, when i installed one, the other hard drive was not connected.
Hence, the default dual boot option would not come along.
Now, I have to choose to boot from either of the HDD from the BIOS setup.
Is there a way i could attach my XP bootloader to Windows 7 boot loader?
I remember seeing somewhere that Windows 7 boot loader has a notion of supporting XP boot as well.
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Nov 10, 2009
I installed Windows 7 64bit onto RAID 0+1 and XP on separate SATA drive. However, I now realise I re-formatted XP drive "out of sequence" in so much as I didn't follow the correct procedure to alter the boot sequence prior to re-format.
I can no longer boot into Windows 7, see following
The bios recognises the RAID setup - apologies for the poor quality.
I have tried running the startup & repair via install DVD, several times, but I keep getting the messsage that setup & repair did not detect any problems.
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Nov 25, 2009
I am having a problem that seems more like a Win XP problem, but since its part of my migration to Windows 7 and many people these days may be trying the same.
As I said, I am in the progress of migrating to Windows 7. As a transient solution until I have transferred and re-installed everything under Windows 7 I want to have a dual boot capability, i.e. I bought me a larger HD, created two partitions on it, installed Windows 7 on the first partition, and then I used a disk-imager (Acronis Disk Director) to copy my entire old XP disk 1:1 to the second partition of the new HD. I then set things up so I can choose between the two partitions using the Windows 7 boot manager. After some fiddling the choosing and booting in principle works fine.
BUT, when I try to start WinXP, I have the very strange effect, that the system at first boots and starts WinXP up fine up to the point where it presents the login screen. When I then enter my name and password my credentials at first seem to be accepted, i.e. I get a "Loading your settings..." dialog but to my dismay only seconds later that dialog always turns into "Logging off..." (???!@#@$&!) at which point the system hangs for some long period. If I wait long enough (~5 minutes) it eventually returns to the login screen again. I also tried to login as Administator but that failed as well (the error message mumbled something about no domain server to verify my id which is complete nonsense, since my XP system was never part of any domain, so there is no server in the world that could verify anything here!).
Any idea what could cause this and why can't I not log into that copied/moved 1:1 Window XP installation? Any hints/suggestions/pointers would be highly welcome!
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Dec 5, 2009
I am running XP on a SATA HDD. I have installed Win 7 on a second partition with some problems. The main problem was random BSOD's. This I believe, I have traced back to the fact that the MoBo runs Nvidia chips. Have downloaded the updated Nvidia Win 7 chip drivers. So, I uninstalled Win 7 and removed boot loader via BCDEDIT.
What I would now like to try is to install Win 7 on a separate IDE HDD connected to the primary IDE controller. This is so I can sort out the Nvidia driver problem.
I can see problems with this. My questions are the following:
What will I set the IDE HDD to be, Master or Slave? Then boot off DVD/ROM and then install Win 7 as normal onto IDE HDD. If yes, I take it that the Windows 7 bootloader will not be installed on the XP SATA HDD. If this is the case then I should be able to use EasyBCD to add the XP on the SATA HDD. Most critical part of the whole deal will be to set the SATA HDD (with XP) to boot FIRST. I have been down this track before and the MoBo sets the IDE as Drive 0 (FIRST boot HDD).
I know that there is a simple answer to this. I just cannot see the forest for the trees at present.
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Dec 8, 2009
I have a small query about this whole partitioning business. I'm trying to set up a partition so I can dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu.
My computer came with a Dell Recovery partition and an OEM partition as well as the main C: drive, which are all primaries. I've created a new logical drive, which I've called Z:, with the idea being to install the Linux OS in that chunk of the drive.
My first question: First up, I've formatted it as "exFAT" - is this the same as FAT32?
Next question: can I divide this 'Z' into smaller chunks with different formats, or do they all have to be the same format? I was hoping to be able to format a small bit of the drive into a Linux file-system so that both OSs can be kept entirely separate from each other, but leave the bulk of it as FAT so that I can see my files with both OSs. If this is not possible, what would be the best way to achieve the desired result?
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Jun 3, 2009
I just installed windows 7 ultimate on my pc.
i already had xp32 and vista 64 business on a dual boot on the same HDD before installing windows 7.
during windows 7 install, I selected the xp32 partition, formatted it and installed windows 7 over the top as I no longer wanted xp32.
When the windows 7 install was complete I expected to see a dual boot screen with
option 1. windows 7
and option 2. vista64
unfortunatelty i have no dual boot options, the pc now just goes straight into windows 7. It doesnt sem to know that vista is there.
i would appreciate assistance in getting a dual boot set up with vista64 and windows 7
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Jun 10, 2009
im trying to dual boot windows 7 beside my already installed vista HP , when i try shrink my c partition with the inbuilt vista partition tool , to create room for the windows 7 partition , it will only allow me to shrink roughly 2000 MB of the drive even though there is 45% of a 250 GB drive still available .
they reccomend at least 16GB of free space to install it,
where am i going wrong , im a little confused ,
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Aug 7, 2009
I have my current system with Vista x64 on the C drive dual-booting with Windows 7 RC installed on the F drive.
Is there a way to install the Windows 7 RTM to my C drive without destroying my Win 7 RC version? I want to leave it there until I have everything installed and working. Then I can format the F drive and start clean.
Or would it be better to just add the new Dual-boot to C drive and then remove the old Vista?
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Aug 19, 2009
I have 3 hdd's.
1 x 160GB (SATA)
- Partition: ~149GB - Win Vista64
1 x 300GB (SATA)
- Partition: ~220GB - MISC
- Partition: ~58.5GB - Windows 7 64
1x 1TB (SATA)
- Partition: ~931GB - Games
I ended up taking my 300GB drive, created a logical partition, then booted into the Windows 7 dvd I have. (win 7 - 7100?, straight off ms)
Firstly, it takes about a couple minutes just to load the files. Then once it finally gets to the splash* screen and the cursor appears.....it takes about 5-10minutes for the "install" window to appear which seems VERY odd since my machine is VERY fast. It takes quite a bit of time to accomplish installing from loading to finished (40minutes maybe)...
After everything installs when I go to choose the Windows 7 option on the boot menu, I get this black SOD
Windowssystem32winloader.exe error 0xc000000D
Something about the file being missing or corrupt.
I took my Windows 7 disk, and entered command prompt through recovery tools (which takes at least 5 minutes due to loading time to get to each time).
I ran DISKPART, then did LIST VOL, so it would tell me the partitions and letters.
Then I took another window, and entered bcdedit. The letters matched up with the partition letters and the file DOES exist.
I've tried 3 different sources on 3 different DVD's to see if perhaps I had a bad image (1 x microsoft/2 x torrent), but that's not the case.
I've tried setting the path's again through bcdedit to make sure there was no data corruption in the settings, and that was not successful either...
So when I need to figure is out why it tells me the file "winloader.exe" is missing or corrupt, when in fact it is pointing to the right harddrive, on the right partition, on the right location.
Yes, they all show up on the BIOS post, yes it recognizes the 300GB drive in the setup without extra drivers. The only hdd it needs extra drivers for to see is my 1TB, but I'm not using that for the Windows 7 installation.
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Oct 23, 2009
Im thinking I might regret. I was told its better to build ur own, so I did and nothing but problems! I had vista 64 / xp 32 bit bit and was having nothing but problems trying to get my video cards to work right! So someone told me to get Windows 7 and Ill have no problems. Wrong!
My problem now is that when I turn on the computer it doesn't give me the option to chose which operating system it just loads into Windows 7. Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this? When I hit the (my computer) option it sees Xp as the D drive. When I loaded Windows 7 I just threw the disc in and followed the directions. I didn't reformat anything cause the disc does it for u.
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