Windows 7: Installation question

I have two SATA drives in my system. I have Windows 7 32bit on one drive and WXP on another. When I installed Windows 7 on my other HD I already had WXP installed and the drive plugged in. So when I booted up I was prompted to choose between booting to Windows 7 or an older version of windows (WXP).


Well....

I just installed Windows 7 64bit on the drive that had WXP on it to take advantage of more memory and now I can’t boot to the drive that has Windows 7 32bit. The drive that had Windows 7 32bit was plugged in during the Windows 7 64bit install but now when I boot up I don’t have an option to choose between the two different versions of Windows 7's. Both are on different SATA HD's.

Well so I went into BIOS and selected the Windows 7 32bit drive to be booted to first (which worked in the past prior to doing this install) and now it says something like it can’t find a bootable file or something like that.

If I boot into the 64bit OS I can see my 32bit drive and can access the files and copy them over but I can’t boot to it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

mjames53ip, welcome to the forums.

What happened is that the boot record/MBR for the 32 bit install was on the XP drive and installing the 64 bit on it overwrote it, that is why you don't have the boot menu or why the 32 bit install won't boot.

You should be able to fix it by booting from the 32 bit disk and running the Startup Repair,

Startup Repair

Also if you want to make it so that you use the bios to decide which to boot from instead of the Windows bootloader, disconnect the 64 bit drive beforehand then reconnect once the 32 bit install is working again.

Thanks soo very much for the quick reply. I will try this when I get back home today.

Thanks again!

As the bootloader files will be on the 64bit HD, you would need copy them over first, than a startup repair.

Before unplugging your 64 bit Windows 7, mark 32 bit Windows 7 Active in Disk Management.

Then power down, unplug 64 bit HD, make sure 32 bit HD is set first to boot in BIOS setup, after DVD.

Now boot Windows 7 DVD Repair console/Repair CD, click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write the MBR to Windows 7 and it starts up.

Now replug 64 bit HD. Choose preferred HD to boot first in BIOS, or use the F-key given on first bootup screen for Boot Menu to interrupt default boot choice and choose other HD.

Worked to perfection!!

Thanks for all the great input!