Well, I did a dual-boot system with Vista 32-bit and 7 64-bit. Now the problem is that, when I'm in Vista, the drive letter of Vista would be C: and 7 would be in B:.
But when I'm in 7, its partition would have the letter C: while Vista would have B:.
Is this normal? What would happen if I installed a program on the path C: in Windows 7?
1. My machine has XP on a single hard drive w/ 3 partitions. In order to try Windows 7 the easiest thing for me to do is to install it on my E: partition. If I boot into Windows 7, do the drive letters change around or do the Windows 7 system files still show up as E:WINDOWS?
Are there any downsides to this installation that I don't know about? If I got tired of Windows 7 would it be a problem to get rid of the bootloader?
2. My original plan was to buy a second hard drive, install it by itself, and load Windows 7 onto it. Then reconnect the original hard drive and dual boot by changing the boot order in the BIOS. What does this do to the drive letters?
I would have one hard drive with 3 partitions and another hard drive with one partition. If I boot Windows 7 I'm guessing that its hard drive would become C: and the other hard drive would become D:, E: and F:. But what happens if I boot XP from the other hard drive? Does it stay C:, D: and E: and the second hard drive becomes F:, or do the letter scramble differently?
1) I currently am running Vista on a laptop on which it is the only OS. I want to install 7 on a second partition for dual boot. However, to keep things tidy, I would like to make Windows 7 Drive C: (which currently contains Vista). Is there a way to image the hard drive then reload it onto drive D: after I install 7 on C:?
2) I guess my other option is to install 7 on the formatted HD, then create a D: partition to run the Vista recovery disks on at least that would restore my drivers, etc. But I really wanted to keep my current configuration around for those programs that are slow to catch on to the new OS. (Or do I even have to worry about this?)
3) If all this dual boot stuff is too complicated or if I really don't need to worry about the driver/software compatibility, I might just do away with that idea and clean install it on the C: drive and forget about Vista. (reluctant to do so since I rely on this computer for school). I will be keeping my C: drive image that I took yesterday so taht I can recover to Vista if need be.
Edt: 4) I just had anther thought. If I install Win 7 clean could I then take my Vista hard drive image and make it into a VHD? that would pretty much solve all my troubles I think. Unless I would need to reinstall Vista onto the VHD.
I already have windows 7 Ulitmate x86 but 1 day I came up with an idea of giving a try on x64 one by dual booting.. So I downloaded it legally from microsoft and I did every procedures required for the install. Shrunk my C drive and installed the OS on the unallocated free space on the drive and it went on perfectly. But the problem is the System Reserved partition showed up on the x86 OS. every time i open My Computer i can see the system reserved partition.
I could accidentally do something wrong with the partition if it remains unhidden so I want to hide it. I was thinking of changing the drive letter but I afraid that's going to give me boot problem. In disk management the System Reserved is labelled Z and marked as active. I tried to set my other partition as active that day but the pc cannot boot at all not even the boot manager showed up. However I managed to fix it using my recovery disc to access the cmd and reactivate the Z drive using diskpart.
I had Windows installed to the first partition on my drive (which is C:) and after a few years now it's gotten full of software I don't use anymore and the like. Rather than install Windows over it and starting over, I decided to install to another partition and get everything set up before doing away with the old one.
I got Windows installed and mostly everything I use installed and working. My plan was to create an image of this copy and clone it back to the original partition. That was my plan until I realized I had screwed up majorly. The second installation of Windows says it's installed to F: (I'm not sure why, since I thought each version of Windows installed sees itself as C:). Maybe because I started the installation from the other copy of Windows instead of booting straight to the install CD.
Now my question is... Is there any way to make this copy think of the drive it's installed on as C: or will I be stuck cloning it to a drive labeled F:? Thinking about it, it doesn't seem possible considering everything is looking to F: instead of C: on this installation.
Here is an image of my drive setup. C: is the old copy (where I want F: to go) [URL]
Vista Ultimate 64bit / Windows 7 Ultimate RC1 64bit
I successfully installed Windows 7 on a blank drive. The installation kept the drive letter "H" and name.
Drive C: Is my Vista boot drive, and I'm done with it. My plan is to change it to some higher letter of the alphabet, then .
Question I
If I change my "G" drive (Windows 7 boot drive) letter to "C" with 'Disk Management' will all be well?
Question II
Will just deleting my Vista installation cause any problems with the Windows 7 installation?
FIX (with SavePart, tried other partition utilities and editing MountedDevices to no avail)
Hope this helps someone else with Wrong Drive Letter Problems
Installed Windows 7 RC and all was well with XP Dual Boot.
After some experimenting(BSD,LINUX,etc), Windows 7 would not boot, so popped in the DVD and let Windows 7 repair the boot.
Windows 7 now booted, but when booting XP on E: , it was now assigned the wrong Drive letter D: and would boot to just before the Logon Prompt and hang(same in safe mode.)
After much research and trial (including editing the HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices hive of the XP install from within Windows 7 to change the drive letter) this was the fix.
This particular XP boots from Partition/Drive E: in Windows.0 directory (yeah, i know, been this way for years)
FIX: (FREE!)
downloaded SavePart "AKA Partition Saving " Partition Saving
Boot from a FreeDOS Floppy or USB stick and run SavePart.exe
within SavePart (navigate with TAB key, Selected items turn BLACK)
Choose:
Update Windows 2000/XP/Vista Registry
then
Choose element where boot configuration are stored (Disk number 0, in this case)
then
Choose element where boot configuration DATA are stored (Partition) where the XP(2000 or Vista) is located
then
Select the Directory where the XP (2000 or Vista) is located (Windows.0 on D Drive, in this case)
You then have access/ability to the change Drive Letters for that particular Windows Installation:
In this case:
Drive D (which needed to be E) and Drive E(which needed to be D)
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?
i have a new work laptop with xp sp3 on it. I want to install w7 64 bit as a dual boot, but only have 1 physical drive. i cannot remove my current installation as it is pre-build from work, but can partition the drive etc. However on trying to install w7 64 bit I get a message saying cannot install windows 7 on efi drive with mbr, not gpt. Can I do what I want without screwing up my xp installation?
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Also ASUS chipset drivers dont work and they were listed as 7 drivers.I tried Vista drivers but it normally shuts down and restarts. Nothing.
I have just given my Dad my old PC, to replace his ancient one from around 2000.It has a SATA hard drive with Windows 7 installed on it. The problem is he can't use his old printer with Windows 7. There is an available driver, but when I attempt to extract it, the message says there isn't enough storage space. This seems a bit crazy to be honest, as it;s not a very big hard drive (75GB total), but there is around 30GB free.Anyway, unless you guys have a solution to that problem I was going to take his old hard drive (80GB) and put XP on it and make a dual boot setup. Then he could use his printer in that at least. I was wondering though if I could simply pop that one into the new machine as it does currently have a recently installed copy of XP on it. I am aware that this may cause issues, but I wanted some good advice.
Also, this hard drive is an old style one (the one with the jumper) settings and I only have one connection on the motherboard for it. So I have had to connect the DVD drive and the hard drive on the same cable. I know that's not ideal, but it seems like there isn't another option. That won't cause problems with the dual boot setup will it?
I have:
4 hard drives
1 160 gigabyte at sata controller 0 position 0
1 64 gigabyte at 0 1
2 bluesy drives at 1 2 & 3
1 1tb drive at 1 4
1 2tb drive at 1 5
The 1 tb is a Debian system running ext4
The 2 tb is a data drive running ext4
The 64 gb is empty And the 160 is empty and where I intend to install windows However it seems that I can't it is not partitioned however when ever I say that it is to be partitioned through the windows install partitioner it again says that it's invalid and I can not continue?
I was trying to make a dual boot system and came across this problem. I have two HDDs, one with Win XP in it and other in which I am trying to load Win 7. I made a primary partition (NTFS) through Win XP in the second HDD (labelled it I) and started loading Win 7 through a bootable pendrive. Things went fine till the installation was complete. Then, when I restarted the system, there was no Boot manager screen, Win 7 just started booting the system ! When I looked into the file system, the partition in which Win7 was installed (I: ) was labelled to C (whereas C was the name of the partition in which Win XP is installed !).
I have two queries:
1. Is it possible to install Win 7 in drive labelled I only (I understand that physically it is the same drive in which I had intended to install it). That's because a small sys. reserved folder is getting created which (most probably) is storing the swap data.
2. How to get the boot manager screen option ie. get the selection screen in the beginning to select b/w XP and 7.
i am running a dual boot system with Vista 32 bit and Windows7 32bit
also using 190.62 nvidia driver on both,with samsung 20'' monitor in
16 x 10i play a game called silent hunter3 online and offline
if i play on vista the driver allows me to switch between 4.3 & 16x10
on windows7 it dosn't allow me to switch,it defaults to 4.3
the game in question is set to 1024x700 it can't be changed.there is some
fault with windows7 not useing the driver the way it should.
In a dual boot system with 2 hard drives, one for Vista and one for Win 7, do both OS partitions need to be "Active & Boot & System"?
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SSD(1): (dual-boot OS drive)
+ Partition 1: Windows 7
+ Partition 2: Windows Server 2012
SSD(2): (program / file drive)
+ Partition 1: one large single partition for application / program storage; e.g., Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Server 2013.
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View 2 Replies View Relatedok so im having a weird problem thats probably very easy to fix.
background info: before my Windows 7 install i had 3 partitions
vista 64
xp 32
empty (soon to be linux)
when i downloaded the newest win 7 build i deleted my xp 32 partition and installed Windows 7 on that partition. because Windows 7 creates that "reserve partition" or what ever, it extended my EMPTY partition with my vista partion. which cause it to become a "logical drive" rather than a "boot" drive. aka i cannot figure out how to access my vista OS.. rather annoying since im just toying with Windows 7 atm.
I want to keep XP for compatibility reasons with some older hardware I still use often. I have XP installed on one hard drive and Windows 7 installed on another. When I installed Windows 7, I just went with the option for it to install a boot manager, and have been using that one ever since to dual boot my system. Nothing special, but it works.The current motherboard is an ASUS model, and has always had problems with the USB section (it took me quite a while to realize it was a motherboard problem, though). Then it began to develop problems reading the DVD drive several months after I installed it (back when it was only an XP system). Once again, not suspecting the motherboard, I replaced the DVD drive, thinking it had gone bad -- it hadn't, works fine in another system. And pretty soon thereafter the current drive began to work sporadically, and now doesn't work at all. Same as before.
This ASUS mb has a 3-year warranty, and it's not quite 2 years old. So, I should probably just suck it up and jump through the dozen or so hoops they toss in your path to get the mb repaired/replaced. Still, I'm guessing that if I'm successful, I may end up with a mb that is different enough from the one I have now where it's gonna break Windows 7 and XP.
I went through this when I originally replaced the motherboard, and ended up having to completely reinstall XP, reactivate it, and then d/l all the updates. I guess I'll be looking at having to do this now for both OSes, eh? If I have to reinstall both OSes, I'm thinking that I should install XP first, then Windows 7, mostly to preserve the dual-boot capabilty?
If I don't get satisfaction from ASUS, I'll probably just drop back 10 and punt, and go with a new mb. I'm gonna try to avoid this though because it's getting harder and harder to find mbs with PCI slots (I need three). I guess if I do this, it will probably amount to the same amount of work as if ASUS sends me a board that is substantially different from the old one.
I have a new Toshiba Qosmio X770 laptop with Dual 120 Gb SSD drives. From the factory it had Win 7 Home. I upgraded immediately to Win 7 Ultimate x64. I set up the VM to use XP (Have to use XP because current dev projects with work are stuck in old ages on XP for the time being). I can run the XP Mode in VM fine and even Visual Studios functions fine. There is a problem with the 3rd party drivers for the USB comm boards we are using, the USB drivers apparently cannot be shared across the VM environment for the particular ones we are using.
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View 2 Replies View RelatedI have an Acer Aspire one. It came with XP and I have it dual booting into Windows 7 which is working well which I installed from a USB Drive as this model doesnt have a CD Drive.
In the main boot screen it says "Earlier version of Windows" For XP and "Windows 7" for windows 7. All was working well until yesterday...
Now I can't boot into "Earlier version of Windows" i.e. XP. It gives me the C:\windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt message. I can boot into Windows 7 fine but all of my work stuff is on the XP platform (I know I can access the files from "7" but I need to get it operational again).
Any ideas? Can I do a repair from the USB Drive?..I've tried a couple of things to boot from the USB Drive but to no avail. And I can't find the BOOT.INI file from XP (I think it gets moved to Windows 7's hidden boot partition when I installed it. I cant seem to access that partition either).