boot.ini issue with win7 & XP on two drives

Hi,

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.

I looked at the boot.ini in the XP drive and compared that to the boot.ini in a laptop with XP and the differences are below:

Normal boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Win 7 altered XP boot.ini:

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /TUTAG=7HEOP4 /KERNEL=TUKERNEL.EXE
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (TuneUp Backup)" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /TUTAG=7HEOP4-BAK

So apparently Win 7 identified the drive with XP and now appears to require something on the XP drive for win 7 to boot.

Any idea what I can do or which files need to be relocated to allow the drive with win 7 to boot without needing the XP drive?

I could just disconnect the other two drives and do a fresh install and then replace the changed XP boot.ini with the virgin one but It's taken me awhile to get the drivers and programs established on the win 7 drive and I'd rather not do a complete reinstall at this time.

Thanks!

first off, I wouldnt recommend your setup.

That said, to do what you want, just setup the drives the way you want them; aparently by disconnecting the XP HD. Now run the Win7 install disc, and choose the repair option. It'll bring you through an OS repair, and in order to boot from it, you have to setup the hardware the same as when you ran the repair.

Let us know how this goes.

-D

Hi,

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. It's been so long since I needed to use the repair console that I completely forgot about its ability to restore the ntldr. That is what I'll do and I'm sure it will work.

I will return to this post and let you know how it worked or not but I'm leaning toward success.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't recommend my booting method, it has always worked for me through the last few motherboards I have upgraded through over the years. The only issue I can conjure is it is the user has to use more keystrokes and know exactly which drive contains which OS and how to save to BIOS memory & reboot. That would prohibit a non geek from using the system but few non-geeks would need to have a tri-boot computer anyway.

For me, it's maybe 20 seconds of additional time each time I go to a different OS.

I'll be back later to let you know how the repair went.

Thanks

M

So apparently Win 7 identified the drive with XP and now appears to require something on the XP drive for win 7 to boot.

That something is bootmgr and bcd, and NT6 compatible mbr.

You could use the cmd prompt and bootsect.exe to change the 7 HD so it can operate as both the System and Boot drive when selected as first boot drive in Bios ( or when the other HD is disconnected).

It is probably just as easy to disconnect the other HD and reinstall 7 on the HD you want it on.

If you wish to return the XP Hd to just using the XP boot management system , you can also do that with cmd prompt and bootsect.exe.

First, I don't recommend doing what you are doing. I would recommend using EasyBCD. It allows you to change the booting of your system and what would be the default option.

Regards,
Tim

Megalomando said:

Hi,

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. It's been so long since I needed to use the repair console that I completely forgot about its ability to restore the ntldr. That is what I'll do and I'm sure it will work.

I will return to this post and let you know how it worked or not but I'm leaning toward success.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't recommend my booting method, it has always worked for me through the last few motherboards I have upgraded through over the years. The only issue I can conjure is it is the user has to use more keystrokes and know exactly which drive contains which OS and how to save to BIOS memory & reboot. That would prohibit a non geek from using the system but few non-geeks would need to have a tri-boot computer anyway.

For me, it's maybe 20 seconds of additional time each time I go to a different OS.

I'll be back later to let you know how the repair went.

Thanks

M

The reason I, and aparently others also, would recommend the setup, is that what if you need to add in a hard drive? if that new hard drive contains any boot data, it's going to try to recover your system and boot from it, possibly overwriting any current settings you have. Also, win7 customizes the bios settings based on if you have downlevel OS's as a part of your boot options. Doing it your way, the settings will be written to best suit your most recent install.

On top of the above, what if you run into a situation where you need data transfered from one OS to the other? You wouldnt be able to actively browse.

I'm sure theres other technical and performance issues that I'm not mentioning, when I tried to do that, (wayy back, before I discovered dual-booting) it worked for a while, but I ran into many issues that ended up with a huge headache, time consumption, and two failed hard drives.

As for your "no non-geeks allowed on this pc" bonus to your setup... I personally don't care of non-geeks take over my PC... its the geeks that I'm sketchy about. their the ones that are dangerous, and will dick with all yur stuff.

btw, how do you remember which HD's are plugged in when each OS runs?? I can see your probably the guy that will have 30 HD's, all on the same Motherboard, and be like... hmm... which OS do I want to install to today? and have a rack of mounted hard drives.

Just get a server, and Octo-boot :)

Hi Antalgebra,

For practical purposes I don't need any more hard drives, I have a TB drive and two 750 GB drives which is plenty.

The Ubuntu has been a pet project because I've been increasingly displeased with Microsoft's approach over the last several years and Linux requires a hands on knowledge of the OS which interests me just about the right amount to make it an inexpensive hobby. I don't use the Linux for anything like my taxes or accounting, just for hobby interests. What that means to me is I don't need to share that information with the other disks.

XP has been my primary OS and the only one I use for mission critical functions. The info on the XP disk will of course be useful on win 7 & vice versa. The liability of Win 7 is I have to use the virtual machine to run a small handful of programs I have used for the last 10 years. These programs were unusable with Vista but to use them under Win 7, there are a series of steps to get them to run and it's not convenient.

Aas to how to remember which drives are which, it shows the unique ID of each drive & well, it's like a name & easy to remember which is which. I've never had an issue with being unable to browse from one OS to the other excepting some issues with Linux but as I mentioned, that drive does not interface outside itself.

I wouldn't suggest what I like to do as regards booting is right for most people but perhaps you haven't tried that whit this kind of bios/motherboard option. If there is a separate OS on each HD, regardless of which that is and I tell the bios to run that hard drive at boot, it will only seek from that drive's OS alone; when booted this way, other OS's do not hijack from other drives. What happened this time is I neglected to remove the other drives when installing Win 7 and Win 7 install raided the XP drive bringing it into the mix, changing the boot.ini in XP and not placing Win 7 files in Win 7 where they normally would have been placed.

Had I as usual, removed all drives except the blank drive and then installed Win 7 on it & then once install was done, reattach the other drives then everything would operate as planned & usual for me.

Apparently Win 7 did not recgonize Linux and include that as a tri-boot.

LOL! agreed about the Geeks being the worst offenders...

I'll read up on Octo Boot, I'll likely keep on with what I've been doing for the last 8 years or so but who knows, maybe Octo will appeal to me.

Thanks for the thoughts.