Think I made a mistake, can anyone help?


  1. Groosh
    Posts : 7
    Windows 7
       New #1

    Think I made a mistake, can anyone help?


    Hey guys I think I made a pretty dumb move and was wondering if maybe there is a way out of it. I was running windows 7 as my primary OS and shrank the volume and created another 50gb partition to run Windows XP Dark edition. I installed it to the correct partition, but made it NTFS. Now on my C: drive, I have 2 NTFS partitions and I can only boot to XP. I can access all of my files I had used in windows 7, but it is not recognized when attempting to choose an OS to boot from in BIOS. Clearly, having two NTFS partitions on 1 drive is a no-no. Is there anyway to repair this without a clean install of windows 7? Also, I'm using a 150gb HD, the partition with Windows 7 is 100gb.
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  3. Jonathan_King
    Posts : 13,354
    Windows 7 Professional x64
       New #2

    There is no problem having 2 NTFS partitions on a drive. What happened is that the XP boot loader replaced 7's.

    First, mark the Windows 7 partition as active: Partition - Mark as Active

    Then run a startup repair for Windows 7.

    Then you will be able to boot into Windows 7. The next step is adding XP to the boot loader. Download EasyBCD 2.0, and add XP. You will need to register in order to download, but it is free.
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  4. gladson1976
    Posts : 1,210
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (XP, 98SE, 95, 3.11, DOS 7.10 on VM) + Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx
       New #3

    You just beat me to it JK :)
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  6. Groosh
    Posts : 7
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       New #4

    Thanks King. I can't mark the partition with 7 on it as active from xp because it's recognizing my xp partition as the active one. I have no way of logging into 7 to change anything from that end, i'm stuck booting into xp. Anyway around that?
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  7. Jonathan_King
    Posts : 13,354
    Windows 7 Professional x64
       New #5

    You can mark a partition as active from the Windows 7 installation or repair disc. See my tutorial Partition - Mark as Active.

    If you don't have a repair or installation disc, you can create one by burning the ISO to a CD. System Repair Disc - Create
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  8. Groosh
    Posts : 7
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       New #6

    Thanks for the help man...really appreciate it.
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  10. Jonathan_King
    Posts : 13,354
    Windows 7 Professional x64
       New #7

    No problem, hope it works out.

    Let us know if you have any more questions or problems.
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