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#1
Windows 7 v XP dual boot mess
Help required to get out of a complete mess!
First up, I'm new not only to this forum but forums in general so apologies if my etiquette is wrong.
I have a new Packard Bell X6620 loaded with Windows 7 64bit Home Premium and 6GB of memory.
The hard drive is 1 TB which is factory partitioned into 2 halves, C: and D:
The DVD is drive E: and there are multiple built in card readers and USBs.
I tried to turn this into a dual boot system by loading XP Pro onto the D: drive using Brink's Method 2 which I have to say is a very well written piece.
Unfortunately I fell at the first as the drive I was offered for the XP load was the J: drive (I now believe the card reader drives caused this to happen).
I nethertheless continued through to the end including running the EasyBCD and (unsuccesfully) attempting to stop XP from deleting the W7 restore points.
From W7 all looked good with the W7 drive as C: and the XP drive as D:
There was a minor issue listed below for completeness [see *], but thats the least of my problems!
From XP however, all was not right as the J: drive is not desiged to be booted to.
[The XP drive was J: and the W7 drive was I: ]
So, I thought I'd boot to W7, reformat the XP drive (D: from here) and try again.
Once again XP loaded into J: and then the fun started.
When I boot now, I get the dual boot prompt but both entries are for XP!
I can't boot to W7 anymore. The files are still there (on the I: drive), but without the option to select W7 I'm stuck.
Running EasyBCD from XP still allows me to set up as before with a W7 and XP option, but it has no effect since when I reboot as I still get 2 XP options.
I've tried booting from the W7 back up disks that I created, which looks good until once again I'm hit with the XP or XP dual prompt choice. (Note that W7 was preloaded so I don't have the original MS disks)
I've looked into booting from a USB key but cant create one without the ISO disks either.
Any suggestions?
I'd be happy to restore to W7 only and forget the dual boot if that's easier.
[* Booting to W7 after W7 was absolutely fine, but booting to W7 after XP caused a recovery to occur each time. Perhaps this is down to the restore points being deleted? I'll only look into this if I can get XP to boot into the C: drive]