Solved Cannot dual boot xp and Windows 7 with W7 installed first.

[gregrocker]

I just told you EasyBCD should prompt to install the XP boot files when you add XP from Win7. If it didn't then there was something else wrong.

The Active flag tells the System which partition is to boot, or the repair function where you want the boot files to be repaired or written. It will not write or repair the boot files to a non-Active partition without marking it Active first. Merely marking it Active will not boot it if the boot files have not been written there yet.

 

[gazza1988]

I just told you EasyBCD should prompt to install the XP boot files when you add XP from Win7. If it didn't then there was something else wrong.

The Active flag tells the System which partition is to boot, or the repair function where you want the boot files to be repaired or written. It will not write or repair the boot files to a non-Active partition without marking it Active first. Merely marking it Active will not boot it if the boot files have not been written there yet.

I didn't have to use easybcd on this install of xp. My win7 boot menu included xp already and upon copying the ntldr file over it then worked.

 

[gregrocker]

This can also be accomplished by booting back into Win7 after XP reinstall, from EasyBCD delete any XP listing, then add it back on Add OS Entry tab. It will prompt for XP boot files if they are needed.

Your skill level allows you to do this manually but the average user requires the Automated methods.

What XP needed was the Primary partition to install it's own boot files which it could not do on Logical which cannot be marked Active. Marking it Active may also have helped. I asked to see the screenshot to see if Win7 is System Active as it should be, and XP is in fact Primary.

Good work for persevering.

 

[Kaktussoft]

My understanding of the activeflag is it acts as a sort of bios in the way bios cchooses the boot order of hard drives the active flag chooses the boot order of partitions. I think many of the 7b bsod errors people have can be rectified this way as this way it installs the boot for xp on the xp partition and easybcd can point to it

bios can change the "boot device order". First try DVD, then floppy, then harddisk for example. The harddisk MBR code looks for an active partition and jumps to it. It loads it volume bootsector code and excutes it. Default win7 boot sector code runs bootmgr which loads \boot\bcd (the win7 bootmenu).

if you install winxp (with win7 partition active)... the volume bootsector will be replaced and loads ntldr instead and that loads boot.ini (winxp menu). win7 startup repair will fix the voluem bootsector and you have a win7 bootmenu again.

What you did initially was possible!! Although you had to do a startup repair afterwards. ntldr.exe, boot.ini were in win7 partition then because that was the boot partition... correct? You were able to boot to winxp!!! Only after a few seconds it gave you stop 7B... but is wat loading. And winxp safe mode gave you even an other error. It was just a bad installation. 7B means you don't have the correct SATA/IDE driver. But you did load it in winxp install console... strange. Other strange thing was it didn't finish the install.. you first had to do a win7 startup repair and add winxp using easybcd. Normally not needed, because winxp install did replace the volume bootsector...normally.

That's why I advised you to mark winxp as active, to force it to not touch win7 at all

 

[Kaktussoft]

I reread the thread. You marked win7 partition active and deleted "system reserved" afterwards. "system reserved" had the ntldr.exe, boot.ini, ntdetect files...maybe some more related to winxp! How the heck could you even finish the install!? Maybe easybcd used generic ones when adding winxp.

 

[gregrocker]

I pointed that out two days ago and suggested one approach would be to rebuild the System Reserved partition if Easy was not adding XP from C. Never got it clear what the time sequence was when exactly SysReserved was deleted, and why. It's likely the crux of the problem.

 

[Kaktussoft]

I pointed that out two days ago and suggested one approach would be to rebuild the System Reserved partition if Easy was not adding XP from C. Never got it clear what the time sequence was when exactly SysReserved was deleted, and why. It's likely the crux of the problem.

I think you're right! Always difficult to understand what an user exactly did and in which order.

 

[gazza1988]

I reread the thread. You marked win7 partition active and deleted "system reserved" afterwards. "system reserved" had the ntldr.exe, boot.ini, ntdetect files...maybe some more related to winxp! How the heck could you even finish the install!? Maybe easybcd used generic ones when adding winxp.

Hi, apologies for the (very) late reply.

I marked the windows 7 partition active and ran bootsect /fixmbr/fixboot/rebuildbcd all from the command prompt on the windows 7 recovery cd, I checked in device management and this made "system reserved" a healthy partition with the flags usually on system reserved moving to the windows 7 partition.

I should note that at this point I had deleted the xp partition.

I also did this because as I stated at first that the xp install worked first time but I must have made an error and upon trying to re-do the steps in the tutorial on this website I got a 7B error.

My logic was to delete the system reserved partition by creating new untouched boot files on the windows 7 partition and removing the old boot files and the seemingly broken XP files that are created but it didn't work out as planned. (the only thing I can think of is using easybcd i tried to use that to change the boot drive so I think I had copied over the dodgy boot files from the system reserved partition to my win7 partition and my bootsect venture was a wasted one)

Only deleting the suggested files above and marking the xp partition as active then installing seemed to work.

All this because of .net framework for xp (I did try to slipstream it but couldn't find it on my cd after initial working install)

 

[gregrocker]

The best solution to start unbootable Win7 is always to Mark Partition Active it's partition (or 100mb - preferred if you have it) then run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times which tests all parameters and automates all fixes. The only time bootrec or bootsect needs to be run manually that I've found is when no installation shows up to repair in WinRe.