Cant boot into Windows 7 after installing XP

Calje · 08 Nov 2010

Hey guys.

Ive been using Windows 7 Ultimate for a few months now, recently i decided to install a copy of XP on a spare hard drive i had, so i can dual boot into XP to play games on (i think it makes me play better, it certainly gives me more fps.) However i didn't realise that when i installed XP it would completely screw over my Windows 7 boot configuration/MBR.

When i boot my PC now, i dont get any advanced boot options it just boots straight into XP. When i try and select the physical hard drive that Windows 7 is installed on i get the error "NTLDR is missing ctrl + alt + dlt to reboot" which is amusing since Windows 7 doesnt actually use ntldr?

Ive done quite a bit of research and it seems the only way is to repair Windows 7. So i put my disc in and booted from it, but when i got into it, it goes straight into setup and tries to install a clean copy of Windows 7. I do get the advanced boot options screen before this, but there is no "repair" option, i tried pressing F8 but nothing happens, there are only the usual "last known good config", "safe mode", etc.

Anyone got an idea of what might be going wrong here? Would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise this will probably be what pushes me to buy a SSD drive

gregrocker · 08 Nov 2010

Did you unplug the WIn7 HD when you installed XP to the spare HD?

If not, it took over the bootloader from Win7 as you are seeing.

To repair this, unplug the XP HD, swap its cable to Win7 or enter BIOS setup to set Win7 HD as first HD to boot, mark Win7 active, then boot into the Win7 DVD REpair console to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to rewrite the System MBR to Win7. Partition - Mark as Active
Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

After Win7 starts once its marked Active plug back in the XP HD and boot it via the one-time BIOS boot menu key for your mobo. This keeps the HD's independent to come and go as you please.

Bare Foot Kid · 09 Nov 2010

Hello Calje, welcome to Seven Forums!

I agree with Greg that a BIOS managed dual boot is the best way to go but if you want a Windows managed dual boot just leave all the Hard Disk Drives (HDD) connected and run the 3 separate startup repairs with a restart between each repair that will give you a boot menu like this with XP instead of Vista at system startup.

click to enlarge

Cant boot into Windows 7 after installing XP-dual-boot2.jpg

Calje · 09 Nov 2010

Thanks for the quick responses guys.

I unplugged the HDD with XP on it, booted from my setup cd, repaired the boot config 3 times and hey presto, it boots into win 7. I also added XP to the boot options via EasyBCD which also works no problem!

Next time i tihnk ill remember to unplug the drive with win7 on!

FIXED!

Bare Foot Kid · 09 Nov 2010

Good to see you got it running and thanks for the update!