Boot - help with neating up MBR mess

- First, i wanted to ask if there is some nice simple safe smooth way of fixing to working condition the boot (MBR and all) of XP, (eg like the Seven DVD offers for 7 )

- more specificaly, i have a dual boot installation with XP and 7 installed on different physical drives but the first MBR read, which controls both OS was created by 7 and is on the XP drive ... So, the XP drive with the 7 drive unpluged starts normally , presents the multi boot options and if you choose XP , loads XP normally (even its own different boot.ini is being loaded in next step) But if the XP drive is unpluged, the 7 won't boot (like os or mbr absent). I itend to fix the 7 with the Windows DVD, and i want to do the same with the XP too. (i will just multiboot from the bios OS selection menu F11/F12 style)

Thank you

This tutorial should help.

BCDEDIT - How to Use

to hopefully simplify my description : my current windows XP & 7 setup was made with both physical drives pluged in and i installed windows 7 last and once discovered the XP installation on the other drive, i allowed the installer to create a multiboot option start menu (and now the 7 drive depends on the XP drive to start. Apparently the 7 dvd wrote the boot information on the XP drive)

What i want to do now is to make both installations / drives totally independent from eachother and i want to be able to choose OS only from the bios F11 (or F12 in some boards) key at boot time. I am more troubled if i can revert the XP MBR to a virgin XP single OS form.

For the win7, unplug the XP physical drive, boot from the win7 install dvd or startup repair disk and run startup repair (upto 3 times may be required). That should make your win7 drive independent of the XP one.

For the XP, run this command in CMD and hit enter:

bootsect /nt52 c:

where c: is the XP drive (change drive letters as per your situation).

Bill2 said:

upto 3 times may be required

you mean it may automatically restart and process up to 3 times before finishes ? or that i will have to boot from the dvd and perform the same procedure up to 3 times ?

Bill2 said:

For the XP, run this command in CMD and hit enter:

bootsect /nt52 c:

where c: is the XP drive (change drive letters as per your situation).

From which of the two OS i am running this in CMD?

1) Boot from dvd to perform the procedures.

2) Anywhere, as long as you choose the right drive letter for XP. You can even do it from the win7 dvd.

Thank you (everyone)

Heres also a bcd report just in case :

Code:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=W:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default                 {91559557-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
resumeobject            {91559552-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
displayorder            {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
                        {91559553-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
                        {91559557-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
toolsdisplayorder       {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout                 4

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
device                  partition=W:
path                    \ntldr
description             Earlier Version of Windows

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {91559553-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
loadoptions             DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
inherit                 {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence        {91559554-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
recoveryenabled         Yes
bootdebug               No
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {91559552-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
nx                      OptIn
pae                     ForceDisable
sos                     No
debug                   No

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier              {91559557-072e-11df-ae7e-be8bb1c2011f}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \BOOT\boot.bin
description             ReadyDriver Plus

- Drive "W:" is the Drive where the XP is installed, as seen from the 7 (Seen from XP is "C:")
- ReadyDriverPlus is remainings of an uninstalled automation that was disabling from the 7 startup menu the drivers signature checking (in order for me to use some legacy drivers for legacy devices. it worked great btw)
- I see no C:\boot\ folder in my 7 system. Nor some small unassigned partition in the 7 physical drive (checked from windows disk management and acronis & paragon disk management software). I suspect 7 uses (and created) the C:\boot\ folder existing in the XP system/drive

copying maybe w:\bootmgr (XP) to c:\bootmgr (7) copying also over the W:\boot\ (XP) to c:\boot\ (7) and copying a copy of the bcd file to C:\boot\ altered from :

Code:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=W:

to

Code:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=C:

would do the trick for the 7 ?