vista 32+7 64 multiboot

dmakalaster · 10 May 2009

Greetings all. I've searched far and wide for information regarding my problem but have come to the conclusion that I may be the only one.
I installed windows 7 on a primary partition that I assigned z, it is NOT listed as active. All seams to work great. The boot screen works as it should and I am able to boot into either OS with only one problem. Every second or third time I switch between vista 32 and 7 64 I end up needing to do CHKDSK on various partitions. All my data(pictures, music, etc..) are on a separate disk(partition)

Disk 0=55mb (EISA configuration)---15GB (E:) Recovery (primary)---197GB (C:) vista(primary,active)---85GB (D:) windows 7 (primary)

When switching between OS the active one becomes C and renames the other one. Perhaps they are communicating and making changes between one another? Then when I switch OS it doesn't agree with the changes?

I tried easybcd and ireboot with the same results. Not really sure I installed them right? I installed them on vista, do they need to be installed on both? I don't think so.....Thanks in advance for any help.

torrentg · 10 May 2009

dmakalaster said:

When switching between OS the active one becomes C and renames the other one. Perhaps they are communicating and making changes between one another? Then when I switch OS it doesn't agree with the changes?

Welcome dmakalaster,

This is normal. There's no renaming or changes going on though. When each OS boots, they check the drive letters assigned by the OS. C: just happens to be what each of your OS has made it.

In dual boot scenario like this, one OS does not communicate or tell the other anything. So there's no intelligence as far as that is concerned.

Have you checked the event viewer, under windows logs then system, for anything with a red ! here? Find any related errors or yellow exclamation points?

dmakalaster · 10 May 2009

I'm not really sure why but the problem seems to have vanished. I used the windows 7 disc and clicked repair. I thought it said there were 0 errors but I admit I didn't read the log completely. But it hasn't opened chkdsk since I've done it(about 15 boots).

Night Hawk · 10 May 2009

When dual booting two different versions or editions of Windows on the same drive the usual advice given in many articles is seeing the second OS primary assigned the D drive letter while the present version booted into is C. Depending on how many other drives on the system that could also be F, G, H, as the lower more commonly used alternates. The Z or other higher letter beyond K is generally designated to remove drives like external usb hard drives or usb flash drives while seeing internal drives assigned in a more consecutive order.

The good thing there is no longer seeing the chkdsk utility automatically appearing on each or every other startup which would likely point to a problem with the partition table information.The automatic repair tool probably fixed a minor problem by simply rewriting the boot entry or replacing a system file so Windows would then run normally.

As far as the two tools from Neosmart those will easily run on both 32bit and 64bit 7 RCs as well as on Vista due to the basically identical method used by the boot loaders for each. The Ireboot tool is for selecting the OS that will be booted into before exiting the one you are in at present. That will override the default OS if you are booting into another.

vista 32+7 64 multiboot

vista 32+7 64 multiboot

Seems to be fixed