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Windows 7 and XP boot loader flip flopping
Hey all,
I have a desktop PC with two hard drives: a 500 gigger with Win 7 Pro x64 installed on it, and a 40GB drive with XP Pro installed. I recently was trying to delete and merge my 100MB System Reserved partition with my primary Win 7 partition, but I didn't do it right, and Windows 7 wouldn't boot. Fortunately, I was able to fix the issue by booting into my XP install and using Partition Wizard to recover the deleted partition. However, it was marked as unallocated space, so I had to mark it as active, and then run Startup Repair so that Windows Recovery Environment could rewrite the files to the new System Recovery partition. It worked, and Windows 7 was just the way it was before I started fiddling with it.
Here's the problem: now XP won't boot! It gives me the "NTLDR is missing" message, and then won't boot. After I restart, it simply ignores the drive and goes right to my 7 install. Well I ran an install on XP, without reformatting, but then XP would boot, and 7 wouldn't. I ran Startup Repair to fix 7, and now 7 boots, and XP doesn't, and so it goes. What is going on here? Do I need to perform a complete, clean install of XP? I still have my files on there, so it doesn't look like anything is wiped. I tried booting up from my XP install disc, but there is no option to hit "R" to repair the partition or run the recovery console. Is there any way that I can make the two drives boot together again as they did before?