Help with Dual Boot please - Windows7 and XP

[Nariman]

Hi there

Hope u can help me. But before I go on, I have searched high and low and can't find the answer to my question anywhere here. Hecne why I am starting a new thread:

I have a PC, with 2 hard drives: Primary HDD, 250Mb, and a secondary drive, 1Tb.

The primary is labelled as 'C''Windows 7'. I have partitioned the secondary drive, into 2 drives: D and E. Called 'D' Windows XP and E my Games drive. D again is about 250Mb and E the rest.

I then proceeded to install windows XP 64bit over my windows 7 64bit. Followed the tutorial here and it all went ok. I have the XP installed, operating fine and my 7 is also working fine. However, I can't get the dual boot display to work correctly at the moment. To boot into XP, I have to hit F12 during boot up and select my second hard drive to boot up. and if I want 7, it boots up by default.

I have modified my BCD registry per tutorial, both in XP and windows7. I get the dual boot message at the beginnig, but when I click on XP, it tells me boot.ini is not correct, failed to detect NTLDR.

Can someone please help me and tell me what to do.
One thing I have noticed is that when 7 loads up, the drives are as they are. But when XP loads up, it renames my C drive to D and my D drive to C. So even though 7 is installed on C drive, when loading XP, it says C is the XP drive! Wierd!

PLease see the attached screnshots. They are pretty much self explanatory, they where all taken with 7 loaded up and not XP.

I woulds appreciate the help in trying to sort my dual boot out.

Thanks very much.

 

[gregrocker]

The cleanest dual boot method with separate HD's is via BIOS boot order, or one-time Boot Menu key. This makes HD's independent to come and go as you please, whereas Windows-managed dual boot interlocks them.

If you want to use BIOS boot method, then just Remove XP from windows-managed Dual Boot using EasyBCD, set your preferred HD to boot first in BIOS boot order, then use one-time Boot Menu key to boot other drive.

If you still want Windows-managed Dual Boot, Install EasyBCD 2.0 beta to Win7 after doing quick registration to use beta in forum.

Remove XP listing on Add/Remove tab, then add it back, accept boot files, autoconfigures, Save, Restart.

Let us know how it goes.

 

[Nariman]

Whats one time boot menu? Is it something setup in Bios?

Currently I can only use the bios method to boot. As said, have to press F12 to give me boot options. Then choose HDD and select the XP one. I do like to use the windows one if it is more staightforward than the one time boot.

Any help on one time boot appreciated.

 

[gregrocker]

Looks like it's F12. Is that satsifactory for you to use for XP, along with presetting Win7 as first to boot?

If so, does the existing failed attempt at WIndows-managed Dual Boot menu interfere or appear along the way to booting either of these via BIOS?

Only if so should you try removing the WIndows-managed XP entry using EasyBCD in Win7.

Unless you do in fact want as Windows-managed Dual Boot instead. Do you?

 

[SIW2]

Hi Nariman,

You see ntldr, boot.ini and ntdetect.com on the XP partition - just copy and paste all 3 onto your windows 7 partition.

Change easybcd entry for XP to point at drive C.

Should take about 10 seconds.

 

[Nariman]

Thanks Guys. EasyBCD beta worked a treat! I can now dual boot using the windows bootloader. Thanks for the help

 

[Nariman]

Whats one time boot menu? Is it something setup in Bios?

Currently I can only use the bios method to boot. As said, have to press F12 to give me boot options. Then choose HDD and select the XP one. I do like to use the windows one if it is more staightforward than the one time boot.

Any help on one time boot appreciated.

Hitting F12 is a bit of pain, as sometimes if I forget to hit it, then I have to retstart and start from scratch.

Now I need to find the drivers for the 64bit windows XP!