Windows 7: Installed windows seven, Now can't boot to vista.

Problem:

I installed windows seven and it boots up automatically without giving me the option to boot into my old vista partition.


Background:

I am sure this is something simple, but I can't get it working.
I had vista installed and I used partition magic to repartition my hard drive on my laptop.
I made the new partition come before my old partition, because I wanted windows 7 to be my primary eventually.

I think it may have someting to do with making the vista partition active, but I am notentirely sure how to do that, so if you can help me out i would really appreciate it, Thanks!

Ok, so I did the commands in this post, except I changed the "XP" to "Vista" and it shows vista but it will not boot, it says I need to insert my vista disk..

Do I need to do that? Or is there something wrong in those commands?

Hi,

No , those commands won't work here - nice try , though.

If you moved your Vista partition , you will need to make a bcd entry to reflect the new position.

Look in Disk Management and find which is the System partition.

Better still, post a jpeg screenshot, like this: ( click View and untick the Action pane and Console Tree to take a shot of the whole Disk Management window)



To post a jpeg screenshot, click Go Advanced at the bottom of this page and follow Step 8 onward of this tutorial:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/14...ool-vista.html

Heres my disk management, I did insert the vista disk and it tried to fix the boot, but it didn't work either



Thanks for the help in advance

Sadly, Partition Magic is not compatible with NT6 (Vista/Windows 7 ) o/s - it wrecks them.

You got away with it because you installed 7 after using it.

1. Go to folder options and make sure Hidden Files and Protected Operating System files are showing.In Disk Management, rt click C and Mark as active

2. Copy and paste bootmgr and the yellow boot folder from D to C.



You will get a message saying you can't copy bcd as it is in use - skip it and the rest will copy.

3. Open an elevated command prompt and at the > prompt, type: (press enter after each command as indicated)

bcdedit /export C:\Boot\bcd {enter}

4. then type:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows Vista" {enter}

You will get a long number in brackets - the {GUID} , or identifier.

Use the {guid-you-got}, including the brackets, in these commands:


bcdedit /set {guid-you-got} device partition=D: {enter}

bcdedit /set {guid-you-got} osdevice partition=D: {enter}

close the cmd prompt.

5. Reboot . Done..

I am getting stuck here, it says that the export command is invalid and that the parameter is incorrect....

Any ideas?

Edit: It looks like I need to create or store the BCD file before I can export it, but I am a not very familar with windows cmd...

Are you sure you did SIW2's step number 2 first?

The absence of C:\boot folder, if you did not, would explain the error message.

If so, just do this command instead:

bcdedit /export C:\Boot\bcd

Ya except my boot directory was named "boot" "Boot" so I used lower case

What I did after a little research was used the import cmd from D: and then the export cmd to C: and that seemed to work...
Still finishing up the rest, but I will report back, Thanks for the help guys!

Okay, That worked, and I can now get choose vista and even log-in but after that it says "preparing your desktop" forever and then finally loads a blank turqoise screen, ughh!
Anyway, I can run tskmanager and thats about it, What did I do!

BTW, what free partitioning tool do you guys use, now that I know I shouldn't use Parted magic

I use Acronis Disk Director Suite. Others, including SIW2 like and use Paragon.

See SIW2 post here:
Clean install with partition

Either will do well for ya. Gparted is a free one though. I never used that but see that it is recommended a lot.

Is explorer.exe started, when looking in task manager? If not, go to file | new task (run) in it and type explorer.exe, hit enter.