Windows 7: Dual boot issue - please help!

Hi,

This is my first post so bear with me, I have checked the forum but can't seem to find quite what I need.

I was running Vista, and not liking it too much so I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC on another partition. Was happily dual booting into both of them until today when I decided to reinstall Vista (I lost my DVD drive when I added 7 and was resorting to reinstalling Vista).

Anyway, Vista reinstalled. Windows 7 sitting there happily on the D drive.

But I cannot get it to dual boot at all.

I have searched high and low and most solutions seem to be adding a legacy OS from Windows 7, not adding Windows 7 from Vista.

I have tried various commands in bcdedit and EasyBCD but not getting anywhere.

I really don't like Vista all that much and really want to get back into Windows 7.

Note, I downloaded the RC so don't have any discs.

Thanks in advance.

Hi barneysmum and welcome to Seven Forums!

Since Windows 7 is still there on your other partition, we should be able to get this sorted out.

There are a couple of tutorials here:

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista

Default Operating System - Change Default Boot OS

and here - dual boot issue

And you can check out the Microsoft article on using the Bootrec tool - How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

Let us know if this helps. If it doesn't we'll try some other stuff.

Barney, give EasyBCD a try. I find it to be quite easy to restore the dual boot with it.

Hi,

I had tried EasyBCD and followed instructions but it doesn't seem to work very well in creating a Windows 7 entry. It set the path to /ntldr which doesn't exist for Windows 7.

I'm happy sticking with the command line bcdedit, but again, not getting anywhere with it.

I have managed to get it to look like this:




(I have no idea what real-mode boot sector is or how I got that there)


But now at boot, if I select Windows 7 it says digital signatures cannot be verified.

I have no access whatsoever to CDs, even if I did I couldn't use them as the DVD drive stopped working after I put Windows 7 on (the whole reason for this issue now!!).

I must be able to sort this from the command line? But I have no idea how.

I didn't have a chance to really look at what you posted, but here is how mine reads. Not sure of anything will jump out at you, but maybe seeing an environment where the dual boot works will jog your memory on something.

bcdedit /default {current}

bcdedit /delete {48b5etc.}

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 7"

Will return a {NewID}

bcdedit /set {NewID} device partition=d:

bcdedit /set {NewID} osdevice partition=d:


Check in Disk Management and see which is listed as System partition - better yet, post a screenie of Disk Management window.

Thank you. I just followed all those commands and now I have this:



Just about to reboot and try it.

The only thing I'm not sure about is if the bootmgr partition should be showing as d: ??

Still getting this on boot:

File: \Windows\System32\winload.exe

"Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file"

It's not even meant to be checking!! It says to press F8 to continue booting anyway but if I press F8 it just comes back to the same message again and again.

Woops, missed your last line.....

C is listed as system partition

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot

C:\Windows\system32>cd d:\Windows\system32

D:\Windows\system32>bcdboot d:\windows /s c: