Windows Booting to Wrong XP Partition

I have this audio latency problem on Windows 7 x64 and x86. These partitions were both on the same hard drive. XP doesn't have this problem but that is on my other hard drive. So, I'm thinking maybe the hard drive with the windows 7 partitions is bad, so I'm trying to test a Windows XP partition on that hard drive to see if it's the hard drive itself that's bad or Windows 7.

Well, the problem. I've made an entry in the boot menu but when I select "Windows XP WD", WD standing for Western Digital, it boots into the other XP partition that's on the other hard drive. This is with the Seagate hard drive first boot priority. When I make the WD hard drive first priority, it just goes to this black screen and stays there forever. Also, the drive letters are different on Windows 7 and XP. Example: XP is on partition D but when I'm booted on XP it is partition J but that's a minor problem that I'm not worried about at the moment.

Also, I cloned the XP partition to XP WD, so maybe they're conflicting? See attachment for settings. I've deleted my x86 partition, if you're wondering where it went.

Did you install Windows 7 last and was it a 'clean' install or an upgrade?

You can also go to Start > Run, type msconfig, click the Boot tab and set your default here.

Windows 7 was installed first. I bought a new hard drive because I didn't have enough space. Installed the new hard drive, cloned 7 from my old hard drive to my new one, formatted the old drive and is now home to Windows XP.

Correct, I don't have the 100MB reserved system partition. I have ntldr and NTDETECT, but no boot.ini in my root C folder. I've set the view hidden files option in folder options.

that's why you're not getting the Windows 7 bootloader...........it being installed first.

There would be no need for EasyBCD.

Try the msconfig suggestion and see if that works.

Or change you hard drive boot order in the BIOS

reghakr said:

that's why you're not getting the Windows 7 bootloader...........it being installed first.

There would be no need for EasyBCD.

Try the msconfig suggestion and see if that works.

Or change you hard drive boot order in the BIOS

What do you mean? I can boot into anything except this XP partition that's on my WD hard drive.

Nikolay said:

Correct, I don't have the 100MB reserved system partition. I have ntldr and NTDETECT, but no boot.ini in my root C folder. I've set the view hidden files option in folder options.

Well ... I haven't experimented with dual booting 7 and XP without the "Reserved System" partition ... yet. It's on my list of things to do. In my dual boot project I found that by editing the boot.ini file (which I copied to the "Reserved System") I could choose to boot to either 2K or XP.

I would suggest adding the 100MB "Reserved System" to your Windows 7 install. There are some atvantages of having it, one being making dual booting easier.

The XP boot.ini file your bootloader is using is still pointing to your other hard drive. Here is an example:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

So the XP you want to boot to is either on disk(0) or disk(1)?

Cheers!
Robert

iseeuu said:

Nikolay said:

Correct, I don't have the 100MB reserved system partition. I have ntldr and NTDETECT, but no boot.ini in my root C folder. I've set the view hidden files option in folder options.

Well ... I haven't experimented with dual booting 7 and XP without the "Reserved System" partition ... yet. It's on my list of things to do. In my dual boot project I found that by editing the boot.ini file (which I copied to the "Reserved System") I could choose to boot to either 2K or XP.

I would suggest adding the 100MB "Reserved System" to your Windows 7 install. There are some atvantages of having it, one being making dual booting easier.

The XP boot.ini file your bootloader is using is still pointing to your other hard drive. Here is an example:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

So the XP you want to boot to is either on disk(0) or disk(1)?

Cheers!
Robert

I want to boot to the XP on disk 0. Also, how do I create a 100MB "Reserved System" partition?

Nikolay said:

I want to boot to the XP on disk 0. Also, how do I create a 100MB "Reserved System" partition?

I have just done this for myself, on my test system, in order to help people with some screen shots. I am not done yet, but here is what I did.

I shrank the first partition on my hard drive to leave 102MB of space. Created a primary (simple) partition, formatted it with NTFS, and set it "Active". Used this Tutorial to alter the boot code in the mbr: MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

Then I used my Repair CD (or the 7 DVD) and did the "Startup Repair" twice (might need to be done 3 times). Once 7 was booting from here, I gave the "System Partition" a temporary drive letter S: and copied the three files (boot.ini, NTLDR, and NTDETECT.COM) from XP to S: (I then removed the S: drive letter)

From an elevated command prompt in Windows 7, I typed these four commands:

Bcdedit /create {legacy} /d “WinXP ProSp3”

Bcdedit /set {legacy} device boot

Bcdedit /set {legacy} path \ntldr

Bcdedit /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

When I rebooted the menu entry for XP booted into XP



https://www.sevenforums.com/installat...dual-boot.html

Cheers!
Robert