Windows 7: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

Your Win XP partition would be better before the Logical Drive.

Greetings Friends!

I am happy to report that I have solved my booting problems to my complete satisfaction!

After doing a good bit of reading, on this forum based on your suggestions and advice, and the EasyBCD Documentation, I understood how things work enough to fix them.

Right now I can boot using a nice EasyBCD generated boot menu into any of my three OS's, but can also boot XP using the BIOS one-off boot menu if I choose to, with a slight edit required to make that work.

The solution was simple, the main problem turned out being the fact that two seperate partitions where marked active (winXp and the initial Windows 7 installation), and this was confusing the boot sequence and the startup repair attmepts.

I set the WinXP partition on disk 1 to inactive. That solved the fact that is was booting first into XP, before the Windows 7 boot menu could appear. But XP wasnt booting at all after doing that. Deleting and recreating the entry for the XP OS in Easy BCD solved that very handily (I left the auto-select drive option turned on). At this point everything was working fine already. Im pretty sure it was booting off of the Windows 7 Office partition as that was active and marked as a 'sytem' partition.

However, since i realized that my initial Windows 7 installations had been loading of the system reserved partition, and that partition was now was left there unused and unloved, I decided to make that my active system partition to boot off of. Its not a bad idea, having it seperate from the rest of the OS, I may grow to like this arrangment :-). This feat was achieved painlessley, first I set the system reserved drive to active and the Windows 7 Office partition to inactive using Disk managment and diskpart. Then, using EasyBCD, on the BCD Backup/Repair page, I changed the boot drive to the system reserved drive, and then did 're-create/Repair boot files'. That worked immediately, no 3 reboots or anything :-)

As a bonus if I want to sperately boot my XP OS without using the Windows 7 compatible bootloader, I set it to active in Disk Management, and it boots up first, without any problems, and also through the BIOS one-off boot menu if I so choose.

Since I never had my two Windows 7 OS's able to boot independantly to begin with, it doesnt bother me that they dont now, but if I wanted them too i pretty sure writing a default Windows 7 bootloader with just one OS to the appropiate partitions with EasyBCD will do the trick.

All in all, an awesome result, many thanks to all who contributed, you are the best! I wish you all an enjoyable rest of the summer, Peace!
Alex

I finally got it working! XP Sp3 solved my problem. Thanks for all the help I got here. It's nice to finally found an active forum Thanks again

Sir I am in a state of dying...
I am really frustated..plz help
I did everything as per article...after copying files(in xp insatallation),when system rebooted an error
occured and now none of my os are booting...
again and again I am getting the same error..
I dont have win 7 dvd...bt if required i can arrange it..
plz tell solution.. I AM SERIOUSLY FRUSTATED..
PLZ DO REPLY..

Did the XP CD see your partitions and begin installation to it's partition?

If so, try booting XP CD again to install to the XP partition you prepared.

If it fails again, you can start Windows 7 by booting the DVD Repair console or Repair CD, using DiskPart to mark Windows 7 partition Active, then run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots until Windows 7 starts up.
System Repair Disc - Create Partition - Mark as Active (Method Two)
Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

Yes the installation was half done,,,but after a reboot it started giving error...
thanks for your quick reply I will again try to install it in the created partition..
But why my previous os(win 7) got inactive??

XP installation steals the System Active flags from Windows 7 partition for itself, requiring those final steps in Method Two of installing EasyBCD to XP to reinstate Windows 7 back to a Dual Boot menu.

However if XP installation fails repeatedly, at any point you can restart Windows 7 following the steps I gave you.

Ok sir now I can boot back to Windows 7 as previous...after that I followed from step 8...
But after restarting system is not showing any boot option..instead it is automatically booting Windows 7..
Any suggestions??

You said that XP installation failed halfway through, so there would be no XP to add to a Dual Boot.

If XP installation has completed, then after starting Windows 7 you would install EasyBCD (older versions are still free) to add XP on Add OS Entry tab, accept XP boot files, let it autocomplete, restart to Dual Boot Menu.

But it will not work if XP did not complete install. You may need to start over with Method Two.

My Laptop Lenovo B560 came with pre installed Windows 7.
I installed XP after Windows 7 (for dual boot) by changing SATA controller Mode to Compatible.

I changed it several times , Compatible for XP and AHCI for Windows 7.
I done the following...

XP Installed in D: (with errors)
Lost Windows 7 from boot menu.
I found 1 extra partition E:
and surprised Windows 7 was in D:

C: was blank.
but when I was using Windows 7, Windows 7 was in C:
(I concluded C: is reserved drive /HIDDEN in Windows 7)

Tried editing C:\boot.ini but it failed Hence....
I studied about bootloaders of Xp and Windows 7.
(frm Windows no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration)
Inserted Vista DVD and replaced Boot rights to Windows 7.

I got my Win 7 back.
And I thought I install Xp in C: and pass rights to win 7 as done before. and use EasyBCD in Windows 7 to add Xp in boot Manager.
(This is because I do not have Win 7 DVD and Drivers for my Laptop and I dont want to loose old one)

and I Continued with XP setup again...
When I was asked to choose partition,
knowing that Windows 7 is actually installed in D: (but when booted into Windows 7 D: is nothing but C: )

I tried to choose C:. but there was no enough free space. (C:=94MB).

>How can I extend C: by adding amount of storage from E: so I continue with setup?