dual boot windows 7 and vista boot error winload.exe

I installed Windows 7 on a partitioned harddrive with vista on the other half.

After the installation i have my boot menu with:
Windows 7
Windows Vista

Windows vista still works but when i try and load windows 7 i get a boot error message:

FILE \windows\system32\winload.exe

Status: 0xc0000428

info: windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file.


I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling a number of times, trying the 32 and 64 bit version, and setting the partition to active... with zero results. Ive been googling my problem for days and haven't found a single thing that has been useful. Please help me out if you have heard of this problem happening or have any idea why it is happening.
Please get back to me.

Cheers
the funk

try to check the Windows 7 partition for bad sectors (using checkdisk).

if that doesn't help, maybe you will need to rebuild the BCD. Use the bootrec command.

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista/7

ok i ran chkdk and bootrec /RebuildBcd

chkdsk: windows has checked the file system and found no problems.


bootrec /RebuildBcd:
successfully scanned windows installations
total identified windows installions: 0
the operation completed successfully.

whatever it was i did did nothing to fix my boot error... any other ideas?

shadowfunk said:

total identified windows installions: 0

seems like a problem there... and it seems like you gave up too soon.

you ran chkdsk with /R parameter?

what about bootrec /scanos and the other stuff?

Maybe you should check the stickies for some tutorials.

your right I should have tried the other options before repling back so fast. Heres what i got.

chkdsk /R:
The type of the file is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Windows connot run disk checking on this volume becasue it is write protected.

bootrec /ScanOs:
Scanning...
successfully scanned windows installations
total identified windows installions: 0
the operation completed successfully.

bootrec /FixMbr:
The operation completed successfully.

bootrec /FixBoot:
The operation completed successfully.

and guess what man......

IF $*#$ING WORKED! ha thanks a lot. I am in finally! GAHH I HAVE THE POWER.
but seriously thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
time to have some fun.

Cheers!

LOL -was about to suggest something else - but you seem to have it under control Shadow.

SIW2 said:

LOL -was about to suggest something else - but you seem to have it under control Shadow.

yes I saw what you had posted and it was a good suggestion

You're welcome shadowfunk.

I "discovered/invented" it as a fix for this issue a little while ago.

Strange no one had thought of it before. Obvious things often go overlooked, I suppose - surprising as this issue is not uncommon.

HEllo everyone,

this is related to the original post:

I got a new computer and my friend helped me install so many programs on it that it took 12 hours. Because this was so time consuming, he vowed never to do that again, so, I decided to clone that entire hard drive (hard drive A) to another hard drive (hard drive B). Because hard drive B is 1 TB, I decided to use it as my everyday hard drive and leave hard drive A, only 320 GB, sitting as a back up incase I need that original system that my friend installed if ever something happened to hard drive B.

So I cloned it fine using Western Digital's Acronis and then I managed to switch the boot drive from A to B and I used Easy BCD to do this and I recall switching back to A only to test whether I can switch back and forth, and, comforting me that neither Hard Drive has been corrupted by the clone.

So now I have been noticing some problems with Hard Drive B's OS/boot partition and so I wanted to, as planned, replace Hard Drive B's OS partition with Hard Drive A.

Note: I do not mind having to erase Hard Drive B entirely to clone Hard Drive A to it.

THE PROBLEM: is that when I tried to boot from Hard Drive A it did not work. It asked me to put in my windows 7 DVD but that did not repair it. I tried detaching Hard Drive B and leaving only A and it said that "if I had plugged in new hardware to remove it and restart my computer" so by itself, Hard Drive A, is thought of as a new Hardware.

I also got an error saying my File:\Boot\BCD status is 0xc000000f

Thank-you for reading this and please help me boot from Hard Drive A again.

@musicmaniac

You can boot through BIOS multiple operating systems without any necessary software.

What you need to do is...

- attach drive A ONLY, start with Windows 7 disc in dvd drive and fix boot (fix start-up)

This should fix it, restart and boot up to drive A.

Shutdown

- attach drive B ONLY, start with Windows 7 disc in dvd drive and fix boot (fix start-up)

This should fix it, restart and boot up to drive B.

Shutdown

Re-attach both drives - start - go to BIOS and just change the drive order to which you want to boot, i.e.

Drive order:

1. Drive A
2. Drive B

Boot order:

1. CD/DVD Drive
2. Drive A
3. Removable Device
4. etc.

So all you will need to do, to boot to a particular system is to change the drive order and nothing else.

NOTE: You won't get the "chose which OS to boot" at start-up. You will have to go through BIOS with that, since both OS's boot information is on their own drives.