Need Help getting dual boot working!

Hi,

In Disk Management , rt click the 100mb partition and give it a drive letter, S is good.

Unzip this and put the 3 files ( not the folder ) on the 100mb partition.

xpbootfilesSIW2.zip

Open Easybcd, go to Add/Remove entries.

Select S in the drive drop down box at the bottom.

Then select Windows NT/2K/XP/2K3 in the Type box.

Click Add Entry.



Give it a drive letter

frisbeejohn said:

I have spent a couple hours reading how-to's and trying to get my dual boot up and running, but I still can't get it

What I have: XP on a 250gig drive and W7 on a 60gig SSD. When I start my comp it goes straight to W7. I can force it to go to XP if i switch my bios to boot off the XP drive. I don't have a XP CD, but I do have a W7 DVD

What I want: Boot screen with Windows 7 as main with XP in a close second.

Here are some pics that may be helpful:

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+rep

SIW2 to the rescue!

That Disk Management snip wouldn't open for me so I didnt' catch the dreaded 100mb holding the boot.

Here is where im at:
I tried both siw2's and torrentg's advice, niether worked or changed the situation. Still getting the missing NTDLR.
under bios my HDD is listed as "IDE channel 4" if that helps. I did change the rdisk value to 4 to try that, no effect.

here is what my easyBCD looks like
Entry #1

Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Windows XP
BCD ID: {f6c2cfdf-bf80-11de-81d6-81fa34a7acda}
Drive: S:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

The fact that the 100mb system reserved partition is there on a dual boot like this means that XP drive must have been plugged in after Win7 was installed. As you can read here, the 100mb isn't supposed to be installed when Win7 is correctly installed last and configs a dual boot with a prior existing OS which is on the drive or plugged in.

You can make sure XP is marked active (as it shows now), delete the 100mb partition, and boot into the Win7 installer Repair console to run startup repair - several times if it doesn't boot after startup. The 3 boot files need to be in XP's root if you do this.

But an easier and safer way which will not possibly lose the ability to boot is to run a Win7 repair install from the desktop. In Win7, the repair install is an Upgrade install that keeps files, programs and settings in place but replaces the OS and reasserts the boot config. This has always worked for me as a last resort to repair boot issues. However I have never had the 100mb present in such a situation so we will have to see if Win7 can reconfig such a mess with a repair install. At least you won't lose the ability to boot into Win7 since a repair install never does.

Afterward we will see if it was able to reconfig your dual boot correctly with the dreaded 100mb partition in the mix. You'll need to reactivate, too, which is no problem from the link at Computer>Properties.

It will only work if you keep DISK0 as the first HD in Bios boot order.

Post a screenshot of the contents of S.

frisbeejohn said:

Here is where im at:
I tried both siw2's and torrentg's advice, niether worked or changed the situation. Still getting the missing NTDLR.
under bios my HDD is listed as "IDE channel 4" if that helps. I did change the rdisk value to 4 to try that, no effect.

here is what my easyBCD looks like
Entry #1

Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Windows XP
BCD ID: {f6c2cfdf-bf80-11de-81d6-81fa34a7acda}
Drive: S:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

IDE channel 4 could = 3

There's a 0 device or, meaning, placeholder to take into consideration.

0, 1, 2, 3

4 integers gets you to 3

SIW2 and torrentg:

Why do you think the 100mb is there on a dual boot? Is it causing the problem?

Would a repair install of 7 sort it out, reasserting the dual boot?

Ok here is a snip of the S content, should be no surprises here:
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Bios looks like this:
IDE channel 0 master: none
IDE channel 0 slave: none
IDE channel 1 master: none
IDE channel 1 slave: none
IDE channel 2 master: Agilty SSD
IDE channel 3 master: none
IDE channel 4 master: WDL HDD
IDE channel 5 master: DVD drive