BCD error trying to boot from upgrade DVD

Hello simon1955, welcome to Seven Forums!


It may be necessary to do a complete wipe of the Hard Disk Drive / Solid State Drive to completely over-write the XP installation and then start the Windows 7 installation process again, have a look at Step One of the Optimize tutorial below; after you have copied out or made back-ups of the data you need to save to external media, then boot the Windows 7 installation media to do the wipe secure erase to the HDD / SSD and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

Whether you use diskpart to run either the clean all command to completely wipe a HDD / SSD or just the clean command to remove the format configuration data and don't use diskpart to create at least a single partition to do the installation to, letting the Windows installer do the format, the new Windows 7 System Reserved partition will be automatically issued, if you want to make your own decision whether this partition is added, study these two (2) options below.

• If you do not want to create the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #2 to create, format and mark Active a single 100GB partition to do the installation to.
• If you do want to create the "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #3 to create, format and mark Active the System Reserved partition and then create and format the 100GB partition to do the installation to.

Either way, running the clean all then creating and formatting the partition(s) using diskpart will get you the best possible space to do a clean install of Windows 7 to; you can always extend the Windows partition to include the remaining unallocated space on the HDD / SSD or create additional Primary partitions or an Extended partition after the installation completes if you choose.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

DISKPART : At PC Startup

Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

Hello again.


Too bad mate, be sure to post back here when you have an update.

Or try running Windows 7 install DVD from XP to see what happens.

Sometimes when Win7 will not install from boot you can run it's installer from XP to overwrite the XP installation and take the C letter, too.

gregrocker said:

Or try running Win7 install DVD from XP to see what happens.

If it gets run from XP it won't get the C: drive letter and that may cause issues when installing progs/apps that are hard-coded to 'look' for C: on install.

Not to mention you often get either of these errors, especially the top one.

YMMV eh mate.


The one I'd be concerned with is the <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl .exe . file error, I've been able to correct the HAL error a time or two but not the other one without a complete reinstall of XP.