Boot.ini Issue With Win7 - XP On Two Drives
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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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 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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Dec 1, 2009
i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it.
then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
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Jan 6, 2010
I currently have windows 7 ultimate in a Dell Gx270 P4 2.6ghz I know its old. And i want to Install Windows XP in another hard drive i have, but how do i make both hard drives boot, so i can select which one i want to boot.
I'm doing this because XP mode doesn't work in this computer. And i don't want to partition.
Most information i find in google requires partitioning and i don't want that.
If you know how please post it, or post the Links where i can find it.
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Dec 29, 2009
Has anyone ever used the Windows 7 Backup/Restore functionality to image different drives?
My intent is to have multiple images of multiple partitions in my system to restore from if the drives themselves fail and theoretically use the boot disk to pick and choose the images to restore to different locations.
I'm a former Acronis 2010 TIH user - the reason, the Acronis app is a complete shambles since they have moved from 2009 to 2010.
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Oct 23, 2009
I'm trying to install Win 7 Pro into my main disk, which is partitioned into a Primary and an Extended partition, as follows:
Primary partition - one small FAT16 (sic!) partition, 1.5GB (usually C
Extended partition - various NTFS logical drives (usually D: onwards)
(This is just the way I've always done it in XP... then I can format compact flash cards to FAT16 for my camera and it's historically been useful having the small C: for a subsequent LInux multi-boot install.)
My problem is that Win7 ignores the FAT C: drive and installs Win7 into the first logical drive, which becomes C:. My small FAT partition does not have a drive letter assigned, it is simply ignored. Fairly early on in the install process, Win 7 informs me it is making changes to the registry - I'm assuming this is to remap the drives and remove the C: map.
I can subsequently assign a drive letter, although not C: (of course).
This is rather annoying... can anyone help? Is it possible to force Win7 to install to the D: drive, leaving my small C: intact?
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Oct 29, 2009
I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop a few days ago. Unfortunately I can detect my hard drive beginning to fail in the last day or so.
I have the single licence single PC edition.
Windows 7 has been activated on my system, can I replace the hard drive and reinstall Windows 7 to a new hard drive on my PC?
I am guessing it is ok as I suspect my PC serial no. is stored in a Microsoft database somewhere when activated and therefore not dependant on the hard drive.
I am just looking for confirmation of this.
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Dec 7, 2009
I have vista installed on a seperate 500gb hard drive. I keep all my media stored on 4tb of other harddrives separately. they are setup as dynamic disks spanned together. Once I upgrade will those drives still work properly and will I loose any data?
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Aug 19, 2009
I'm using Win 7 Professional x64 rtm from MSDNAA.
When i try to create a clean install, everything goes smooth untill the Partition selection screen. I get a "no drives were detected" notice and the list is empty. It offers the Load drivers option but i dont really know where to get them.
I have Striker Extreme motherboard, and a wdc wd5000aaks SCSI hard drive (connected via SATA).
Im running Vista Ultimate x64 at the moment. If i use vista's install dvd to see if it finds hdd drive during installation, it does find them. Also if i try to use Windows 7 installer from within Vista, win 7 installer finds my hdd normally.
What should i do?
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Nov 21, 2009
i am looking to build a new PC and will include a Corsair SSD.. need some information re TRIM support..Win7 I understand supports TRIM but do you need to install a program or is this already in Win7?
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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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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 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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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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