Solved Changing a Dual Boot with XP & Win7

[john1955]

I want to keep both operating systems but I want the dual boot to be through the BIOS rather than with the boot manager. If the drive with XP fails I want to still be able to boot into 7 by just selecting that drive at the BIOS Boot Menu.

XP and Win7 are each on there own Solid State Drive

I think this is doable but I have searched and searched and cant find an article on how to do it. Is it as easy as deleting Win7 from Windows Boot Manager and then running "Fixboot" on Win7?

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77-HD3

P.S. Are there any downfalls to what I want to do?

 

[whs]

It is actually very simple. When you install system 1, disconnect the disk for system 2 and vice versa. That way you will get an independent bootmgr on each disk.

 

[john1955]

Thanks for the quick reply

Both systems are already installed so do I just run setup on the Win7 disk AFTER I delete Win7 from the boot manager?

I'm sorta looking for a step by step just to keep me calm LOL

So is it . . .

1) Delete Win7 from boot manager
2) Unplug the Drive with XP
3) Run the Win7 setup and select "fix boot"
4) Test that it boots
5) Plug in the XP Drive and test again


Thanks again

 

[townsbg]

I want to keep both operating systems but I want the dual boot to be through the BIOS rather than with the boot manager. If the drive with XP fails I want to still be able to boot into 7 by just selecting that drive at the BIOS Boot Menu.

XP and Win7 are each on there own Solid State Drive

I think this is doable but I have searched and searched and cant find an article on how to do it. Is it as easy as deleting Win7 from Windows Boot Manager and then running "Fixboot" on Win7?

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77-HD3

P.S. Are there any downfalls to what I want to do?

Short of a reinstall of each system you can use easybcd to remove the XP entry from the 7 bootloader and then use the xp install disk to restore the xp bootloader with the 7 drive disconnected. Note that you will need to have the ability to select hard drives using the bios or this won't work. Try this tutorial to restore the xp bootloader. How to Reinstall the Windows XP Bootloader | My Solutions IT. Also note that you need to be extremely careful with easybcd because if you perform the wrong operation you will lose the ability to boot into either system.

 

[john1955]

Short of a reinstall of each system you can use easybcd to remove the XP entry from the 7 bootloader and then use the xp install disk to restore the xp bootloader with the 7 drive disconnected. Note that you will need to have the ability to select hard drives using the bios or this won't work. Try this tutorial to restore the xp bootloader. How to Reinstall the Windows XP Bootloader | My Solutions IT. Also note that you need to be extremely careful with easybcd because if you perform the wrong operation you will lose the ability to boot into either system.

Is this the method when XP was installed first as is my case?

I set this up two years ago and it seems that 7 is booting from the XP disk

 

[townsbg]

The bootloader was changed starting with Vista so you are not booting from xp because the xp bootloader would have been replaced by the 7 bootloader. I am confused by your picture. Do you have 2 installs of both systems?

 

[john1955]

The bootloader was changed starting with Vista so you are not booting from xp because the xp bootloader would have been replaced by the 7 bootloader. I am confused by your picture. Do you have 2 installs of both systems?

I have one install of each system. I labeled them this way so I could identify them no matter how I booted (including from Bart-PE)

When I'm in Win7 then Win7 is the C & D drives and XP is F & G

I take it then that the steps I thought I should take are incorrect?

The reason I'm a bit shy of this is because every example Ive read has Win7 and XP on the same hard drive and they want to delete XP altogether.

I do have disk images of both drives so I can get back to where I started but I cant be down for very long.

 

[john1955]

OK, I'm half way there. I deleted XP from the boot menu now I just have to make XP bootable. I'm sure I saved XP's MBR somewhere when I set this up but I cant remember where or if I named it so I can find it.

I found a file named "boot.ini.bac.txt" with the following . . .

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP SP3" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

 

[john1955]

Well XP boots with the 7 disk unplugged and 7 booted with the XP disk unplugged but now 7 wont boot with both drives plugged in. I get the missing ntldr message when selecting the drive from the BIOS that Win7 is on.

 

[john1955]

After fixing XP to boot I had to run Win7 setup three times to fix it's booting.

Now it's just the way I wanted it.

Thanks for the hand holding . . .

 

[townsbg]

I'm glad to hear it.