Dual boot Win7 with XP - disaster!

Another data drive marked Active! Must be contagious.

Try unplugging the drive. Mark Win7 active and run startup repair.

If that doesn't work, post the Entries from EasyBCD. Anything else, SIW2?

Boot into 7 - the dvd is in the drive , right?

Open an elevated command, Type ( press enter after each command)

bcdboot c:\windows /s e:

bcdedit/set {bootmgr} device boot

yourdvddriveletter:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 e: /mbr

bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"

bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=e:

bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr

bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast

Unzip this and put the 3 files ( not the folder ) on the root of E: overwrite the exiting ones ( if asked ).

xpbootfiles_1.1_2.1.zip

Shut down .

Restart enter bios and make sure Disk 2 is the first HD in Bios HD Boot order.

Easy enough, eh Greg.

OK tried it - thanks.

The good news: I can now boot into Win7 WITHOUT the DVD in the drive!

The (very) bad news: I now get no Win7 boot loader screen, so cannot choose to load Win XP. Win 7 just loads automatically after POST.....

My mistake, forgot to copy the old bcd hive across, no biggie

Do this again from within 7:

bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"

bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=e:

bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr

bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast

I'm impressed, SIW2. How come EasyBCD can't perform this?

It worked - I officially love you.

At first I had no joy, but after changing the boot priority of the hard drives a few times it eventually worked.

Thank you very much.

At first I had no joy, but after changing the boot priority of the hard drives a few times it eventually worked.

Could this have been the problem all along?

I have a dual-boot (XP and 7) setup and I'm guessing that if I changed my HDDs' boot priority, I would not get the multi-boot menu at startup - it would just boot the OS on the top-priority disk. Can anyone confirm this?

You're definitely trying to "move Microsoft's cheese" by going with a triple-boot. Having worked in IT for about 23 years, I stick to the tenet that everything works great as long as you do what's expected.

desertjedi said:

You're definitely trying to "move Microsoft's cheese" by going with a triple-boot. Having worked in IT for about 23 years, I stick to the tenet that everything works great as long as you do what's expected.

I take your point, but what really grinds my proverbial here is that the triple-boot was effortless under Vista, it workled flawlessly straight away.

But yes, maybe the HD boot priority was the culprit all along, sadly I don't understand this stuff well enough to judge this - unlike others in this thread!

Great - you can't have too much love.

Have Fun

Mandrake5 said:

It worked - I officially love you.

At first I had no joy, but after changing the boot priority of the hard drives a few times it eventually worked.

Thank you very much.

There was an unrelated data drive marked Active. This derailed your multi boot at install.