Boot problems following use of EasyBCD

I have XP pro on one internal disk and W7 pro on another. Both were working fine except the OS choice screen at startup was not allowing me to boot straight in to the OS of choice (there was another choice screen when using the XP option). It was trying to rectify this that I started using Easy BCD and managed to completely mess up my boot up process. At one point I was not able to go any further than black screens with white print!
XP is working again courtesy of a clean instal (there were only programs on that drive and no data to worry about)
The W7 drive is another matter though. I had spent quite a bit of time setting things up as I wanted and whilst all data is backed up, restoring the drive to where it was will be a real pain.
The W7 drive was supplied by the maker (Novatech, a UK firm) with the OS pre-installed and a recovery partition included (plus a W7 OEM cd).
It appears that the Recovery Partition also included the MBR.
As a result of my endeavours the drive does boot into W7 but no longer recognises the OS as a genuine copy and hangs at the "preparing your desktop" screen before advising that the copy of W7 is not genuine and powering down.
Any bright ideas would be much appreciated if it can save me rebuilding things to the way they were.
The OS's incidentally are W7 pro 64bit and XP pro 32bit.(and both are genuine!)

Have you run Startup Repair repeatedly and what did it report?

It's too bad you didn't check with us when you had the EasyBCD problems before reinstalling XP as we could have easily helped you correct it.

Non-geniune lockouts after repairs, reimaging or repartitioning are often caused by drive letter slippage. Download and burn to CD (using Windows Image Burner) this program: Paragon rescue disk; change drive letter; recover data. Boot into Normal mode, select Boot corrector, browse to the correct partition by size and name, make sure it has its correct letter. If not, change the letter to the correct one, if necessary freeing up the letter which has been hijacked by another partition.


Is the OEM disk you have a Win7 reinstallation DVD or just drivers? If necessary we can help you get the superior Clean Reinstall Windows 7 Factory OEM without the OEM bloatware and useless factory utilties which have much better versions built into WIn7. This will also correctly configure the Dual Boot with XP partition. Start by copying your data out to external or flash stick using Paragon CD.

Hi Gregrocker,

Thanks for your response and yes I have tried the Startup repair for more that the prescribed 3 times and what was reported was:
-for all tests error code "0x0"
-Root causes found - "Boot status indicated that the OS booted successfully".

This ofcourse is true BUT the system does not recognise the installation to be based on a genuine Windows product.

The Paragon Boot Correction Wizard does not seem to be doing what might be hoped of it - from within the Wizard I changed the Drive letters to reflect the original settings (i.e. Recovery Partition "I" and the main partition "C")
Taking that applied correction back to the System repair however showed the bootable drive as "D"

With regard to your last question the W7 disk is I believe the full DVD marked as "licensed for distribution only with a new computer". Infact I know it to be a full product as I have been able to install it on a seperate disk, where I am currently using the grace period. It is because I have followed this path that I have realised just how much will be involved in getting back to the point where things went pear shaped.. and also the aggro. of reactivating via Ms !

Windows recovery environment ( System Repair) will assign it's own drive letters - they are temporary and have nothing to do with the drive letters stored in your operating system on the hard drive.

If you are certain that when you used Paragon you assigned the correct drive letter to your windows 7 partition, try booting it and see what happens - you may still get a windows not genuine message for a moment - but should be able to get past it.

Thanks SIW2. I have again tried to boot into my original W7 drive but to no avail. The startup hangs on the "preparing your desktop" screen before the screen eventually turns black and having in the bottom right corner the advice that "This copy of Windows is not genuine".

As to my certainty of having entered the correct drive information in the Boot Correction Wizard, I guess in truth I can not be certain. I am sure that the Drive letters I have assigned are those which were originally allocated to the Drive / Partitions (as seen in Disk Management) before things went wrong. If letters might have been varied in the MBR via my forray into Easy BCD, I am not sure how I would gain that info.

Oem activation involves a slic table in bios with a matching validation marker.

As far as I know - the mbr is not relevant.

Because you are getting as far as you are - you are way past the mbr stage - there is nothing wrong with the mbr.

What exactly did you do with Easybcd?

If anyone can help you resolve this it will be SIW2 who is our teacher here so work closely with him.

Perhaps to help you can post up a maximized XP Disk Management drive map and listings screenshot, then install free Partition Wizard to XP to post up the same thing to compare. Screenshot with Paint
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums - Windows 7 Forums

gregrocker said:

If anyone can help you resolve this it will be SIW2 who is our teacher here so work closely with him.

Perhaps to help you can post up a maximized XP Disk Management drive map and listings screenshot, then install free Partition Wizard to XP to post up the same thing to compare. Screenshot with Paint
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums - Windows 7 Forums

Gregrocker, thanks for your input.

SIW2 said:

Oem activation involves a slic table in bios with a matching validation marker.

As far as I know - the mbr is not relevant.

Because you are getting as far as you are - you are way past the mbr stage - there is nothing wrong with the mbr.

What exactly did you do with Easybcd?

SIW2,

I wish I knew! This seems to enforce that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'll try to put together the material that Gregrocker has suggested to see if that clarifies the current state of play.

From attempts to get things as I wanted them (before the foul up) it did seem that the relationship between the two partitions on the pre-loaded drive were key to the genuineness of the installation being recognised, booting from the Recovery partition ("I" initially) to the system partition "C".

It appears that the drive letters on my pc have indeed ""slipped" and I am guessing that the combination of drive letters being looked for at start up is no longer what is being found.

I'll get snipping.

ppbrec1 said:

SIW2 said:

Oem activation involves a slic table in bios with a matching validation marker.

As far as I know - the mbr is not relevant.

Because you are getting as far as you are - you are way past the mbr stage - there is nothing wrong with the mbr.

What exactly did you do with Easybcd?

SIW2,

I wish I knew! This seems to enforce that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'll try to put together the material that Gregrocker has suggested to see if that clarifies the current state of play.

From attempts to get things as I wanted them (before the foul up) it did seem that the relationship between the two partitions on the pre-loaded drive were key to the genuineness of the installation being recognised, booting from the Recovery partition ("I" initially) to the system partition "C".

It appears that the drive letters on my pc have indeed ""slipped" and I am guessing that the combination of drive letters being looked for at start up is no longer what is being found.

I'll get snipping.

OK. Sorry for the delay - my wife feels that life should go on as normal despite my PC's ailments.

Below are the screen shots gregrocker was suggesting for comparative purposes:-

a) Expanded view of Disk Management - 3 x HDD drives attached.



b) Paragon Disk Drives screen.



{I am not sure whether at this stage it would be helpful or not to give a brief outline of what has gone before - if not then please ignore this bracketed section.

My PC came with W7 pre-installed on the Drive currently containing Partitions "I" and "F". The smallest HDD currently "E" came from my last machine where I was running XP and on which the mobo "died".
At the outset I was not au fait with Microsoft's licensing policy when introducing the old drive into the present PC - a leason well enough learned.
When a new copy of XP was obtained it seemed that minimum cause for disruption would come from disconnecting my other drives whilst a clean install was performed.
Once completed and all drives reconnected I had two OS's on the seperate drives and then tried to employ the boot wizard from Paragon's Hard Disk Management Suite 11.

I could not have used that product properly because the boot process I was left with required going through an extra screen. At the time that seemed to offend sensibilities - in hind site it really was not that much of a problem !!

So to overcome that I contacted Paragon's "Support" section who felt that a reinstall of XP first followed by W7 was the simplest way to achieve a Dual Boot.They did however mention the EasyBCD program and that is how I came across it - and armed with this new-found toy managed to cause even more mayhem than I had achieved with Paragon's program alone.}

From background reading, and because W7 came pre-installed with the PC, I have tended to disconnect drives "to preserve their integrity?" whilst working on others. So it is that in my earlier comments I have referred to Drive letters that no longer match the screen shots I have produced for you now. What I can tell you however is that whilst the original W7 drive is the only one connected, and accessing the data via Startup repair on the W7 disc, the partitions which started life as "I" and "C" are respectively shown as "C" and "D" from a Diskpart query at the Comand Prompt. Whether this holds any clues I regret I can not interpret.