Win7 Won't Boot After Install Without DVD Using 2 HDD
Oct 28, 2009
So, I have an interesting problem with installing Win 7 from XP. I'm doing a full install over the old XP drive.
I have an unusual hardware configuration. I have 2 HDD's, one is SATA, and the other is on a legacy IDE. The SATA drive is a WD Raptor which I use for the OS and the IDE is a slower, larger drive I use for storing data. Additionally, the IDE drive is the Slave on the IDE chain. In XP, this worked great, because the system would boot to the SATA drive and I could use both drives.
When I went to install 7, both drives appear in the list, but their letter names were reversed: the OS drive was listed as "D" and the data drive was listed as "C". I didn't think much of it until later. I installed on "D" which was the SATA drive. After install, I noticed that my IDE drive wasn't listed in file explorer.
So I opened the Disk Manager and found that both drives were listed, but only the install disk was active. However, the IDE drive was Disk 0, and the SATA drive was Disk 1 and labeled "C:". I activated the IDE drive and it became "E:" (the DVD-ROM was already "D:"). I attempted to reboot and got an error "BOOTMGR is missing". If I put in the Win 7 install DVD it will boot to the SATA drive.
I read some of the other threads here and attempted fixes using "bootrec.exe" to no avail. I finally decided to reinstall again on the SATA drive. Again, 7 listed the SATA drive as Disk 1/"C:", and the IDE drive as Disk 0/(no letter). This time, I didn't activate the IDE drive and tried to reboot. New message "No system disk...". Put in the Win 7 DVD and it boots to the SATA drive.
My current theory is that Windows 7 is getting confused about the drive ordering when creating the boot sector on the drives. I ran out of time last night, but I thought I would unplug the IDE drive and do a fresh install on the SATA drive, then plug in the IDE drive after things were booting normally.
I did check the BIOS settings, and the SATA drive is listed first in the boot order.
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
AMD 4200+ CPU
OCZ 4GB RAM
(IDE) Hitachi 320GB
(SATA) WD Raptor 120GB
nVidia 7600GT
Can someone offer some advice on how to solve this so I don't need the Win 7 DVD in all the time?
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Nov 15, 2009
OK, I had the issue that several people have had with windows hanging at the "Starting Windows" Screen. I discovered that disabling the USB 2.0 Controller in BIOS allowed me to finish the install, and boot into windows normally. I re-enabled the controller and booting into windows hangs at the same place as before...turning it back off fixed it again.
My problem is that my only disk drive is a USB external drive, and I will probably be doing some file transfers using USB...I need the speed. Installing windows took a LONG time at USB 1.1.
Flashing to new BIOS and running windows update will be tried today to see if that will solve the issue but I wanted to post to see if anyone had some ideas that I hadn't thought of.
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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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Nov 3, 2009
I have just discovered that I cannot do an Upgrade from Vista HP to Win 7 Pro and that I will have to do a Custom or clean install. That will be OK and doesn't cause any problems.
I have XP on one HDD and Vista on another with dual boot. However I want to replace Vista HP with Win 7 Pro 32 bit, ( I intend to go 64 bit later on).
What I would like to know is, will Win 7 replace Vista on the boot sequence (MBR?), so that on booting the PC I have the option of selecting either XP or Win 7, or will I be presented with a boot menu of XP, Vista and Windows 7, albeit that Vista is no longer installed? If the latter, will this cause any problems in selecting the OS that I want to launch i.e the MBR looking for a now non existing Vista and would there be a way to remove reference to Vista?
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Nov 20, 2009
I have a hp dv 6000 i was trying to dual boot my pc with win 7 and xp pro, with win 7 installed first. in order to install xp i had to disable my sata native. I can dual boot but on my xp its seem I'm missing alot of drives. I have no internet or sound,
any suggestions?
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Jun 9, 2009
I've installed 64bit win 7 on a 2nd partion of my main drive running vista 64bit. The installation all went smoothly and loaded into win 7.
But when restarted I did't get a windows boot manager screen so i could pick if I wish to load Vista or Windows 7, instead my system just loads straight into Vista.
Do I have to enable my system to be able to see the Windows 7 install?
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Nov 8, 2009
I have purchased and downloaded both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows7 Professional (no CDs or media here only download version)
I sucessfully upgraded from Vista 32 to Windows 7 32
Then I upgraded my hard disk (140Gb 500GB) and RAM (3GB to to 4GB)
Now I would like to go from Windows 7 32bit to 64bit
When I try and run the Windows 7-P-retail-en-us.x64.exe file it upacks the box then stops with this error:"We are unable to create or save files in the folder in which this application was downloaded. Please check the folder properties to make sure that you have security permission on the folder to write flies and that that folder is not read only".
I am the System Admin and I have full rights, and have moved the exe and the setup box files to My Documentsand I have modified the directory properties/attributes but I still get the same error over and over.
I searched the posts and some people stated one needs a clean install others say you can upgrade from any version so I am trying the upgrade here especially since the upgrade from Vista 32 to Windows 7 32 was smooth and did require all the extra work of a reinstall.
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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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Jun 12, 2009
My Abit IP35 Pro motherboard's BIOS allows me to select which hard drive is the primary upon boot. If I have three separate OS on each drive, I can select which one I wish to run from bios.
Up till now I have installed a new OS on a separate drive by disconnecting the other connected drives and all has gone fine. When I installed Win 7 on a blank drive, I forgot to disconnect the other two. One drive has XP the other Ubuntu Linux.
During the Win 7 setup I selected the new blank drive and installed WIN 7 on it. All went well but when I rebooted, I had a dual boot: Win 7 made a dual boot with the XP but not the Linux. I didn't want Windows to offer me the dual boot, I wanted to select that in the bios.
So after all is said & done, booting into Linux via the bios switching start up drives goes fine & as before.
Booting into the XP drive via the bios I now get the dual boot option and selecting XP or Win 7 works fine. Booting into the Windows 7 drive, NTLDR is missing and it will not boot yet this is the drive containing the Windows 7 operating drive.
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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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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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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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May 10, 2009
I have four SATA II drives, four gig memory, etc, in my machine that have Windows XP and Vista dual-booting. Both OS's are installed on the same physical drives; about 150 gig each partition.
I've freed up one of the drives, changed the BIOS to boot from the DVD, and installed Windows 7, 64-bit. The installation completed without a hitch and the setup detected everything, sans the Viewsonic monitor. Windows did have a driver for the monitor, but I used the one for Vista 64-bit from Viewsonic and we are good.
After rebooting Windows 7, I expected to have couple of boot option but there's none. No XP and/or Vista, just Windows 7. I've tried to locate the bootmanager in Windows 7, but I couldn't find it and that worried me. There was no backup made since it should've picked up the other OS's.
I didn't touch any of the bootsectors, nor did Windows 7; the latter one did make the drive a primary disk and installed the boot record there. After modifying the BIOS, making the the XP/Vista drive the first drive to be booted, XP and Vista came back, but Windows 7 disappeared. I can boot either OS's by changing the order the drives are booted by the BIOS, but I rather have the choice for XP/Vista/7 in the boot menu.
I am not sure why Windows 7 didn't pick up on the other OS's; the reason could be the SATA drives, if I'd have to guess. Since "disk 1" was set as the first drive to boot by the BIOS, Windows 7 did not check other drives and declared itself the only OS.
The question is, how do I add Windows 7 to the Vista's boot menu, or alternatively, how do I add XP/Vista to 7's boot menu?
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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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Jun 20, 2009
I have a HP desktop that came with Vista, I partitioned my C drive (which already had a small partition from HP for the recovery stuff labeled D and made a "S" drive for the Windows 7 install.
I installed the copy of Windows 7 i made from the official ISO from MS and it works ok as long as the DVD is still in the drive...it asks to press any key to boot from cd or DVD, I leave it alone then my option screen comes up and I can pick from either vista or Windows 7 just fine. If the DVD is NOT in the drive then the options I have are either vista or "Windows Setup" and in that case I get
File: $WINDOWS..~BTWindowsSystem32winload.exe
Status: 0xc000000f
selected entry couuld not be loaded cuz missing or corrupt
I tried to do the automatic reapair in the Windows 7 installer and sometimes it would come up as finding an error and says it fixed but most of the time it says there is nothing wrong.
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Jun 21, 2009
So i have had Windows 7 build 7100 on my laptop for a few months, i was at work and wanted to plug a tv to my vga side port. when i plugged it in, my computer got the blue screen then said physical memory dump
i shut off the computer and restarted it Windows does not boot up any more, it will go to where the Windows icons should fly in, but they never do. It will take me to the startup repair, i tried repairing it but it said it could not.
I tried the system restore from an earlier date but that would crash and say it failed.
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Jun 30, 2009
I installed Win 7 sometime around Feb, a dual boot with Win XP. But when I upgraded Win XP to Vista, the option for Win 7 disappeared on the boot screen, and the system would boot straight into Vista. So, I used the Startup repair option from the Win 7, and after rebooting it showed the boot screen with W 7, and Vista. But, after I "repaired" it, Win 7 seems to have lost the Win 7 startup screen. It now shows the "Starting Windows" from Windows Vista, then the Win 7 "welcome" screen.
I realize it's not much of a problem, but is there any way I could get the Win 7 startup screen back?
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