can't initialize to MBR!

Night Hawk said:

You first have to verify which drive letter is assigned in the DM for the XP drive. If F you apparently used D when adding the new entry in offsetting things a bit but wouldn't be seeing the XP boot options menu!

I entered "F" and saved the settings, but in the View window it showed as "D"!

Night Hawk said:

In the 7 DM first make sure the XP drive is set with the letter you want to use for the XP drive if not already seen in WE as F. The options found in the EasyBCD's Advanced Settings will allow you to reassociate the XP entry with the correct drive letter as well.(see attached image)

I did that as well, but it showed as D again!

Night Hawk said:

Once you change and even rename the entry simply click on the "save" button to save the change made.

Did that.

Night Hawk said:

The F8 boot menu shows that XP is loading but having a problem of some type where you will want to take notice of any error messages like those seen if a blue screen appears in order to trace the problem.

Knowing that XP made the attempt however is certainly good news for you. Now to get it running normally! You may end up needing another full install to replace the present following the guide or a repair install if the option is seen during the setup to correct initial installation problems.

I just reinstalled XP as well, because I had to use the CD for repair. Will have to try and see how it goes now.

Well, it offers the options on bootup, but when I select XP I get an error msg, saying I should insert the installation disc and do a "repair", as well as this:
FILE \NST\ntldr
The selected entry could not be located because the application is either missing or corrupted.

Last time this happened I reinstalled XP, then had to use the rescue CD to get into W7 again. This time I just rebooted and it did allow me to select W7 again.
Anyway, we only put a "ntldr" file in the root, not a NST\ntldr. No wonder it can't be found!

After checking to see if F was set in the 7 DM did you go into the Advanced Settings in the EasyBCD program and try reassociating the entry to F from D? If that doesn't work you simply delete the present XP entry and add a new one pointing at F.

You're still making progress despite a few obstacles from where you were. The important will getting XP to run. Minor adjustments can be taken care of after.

As for a repair install of XP that wouldn't trash the 7 part of the mbr like a full clean install would since you are in a sense performing an upgrade repair install without using the upgrade option in Windows. Basically it does the same thing as far as replacing the main system files whille leaving the rest intact.

Night Hawk said:

After checking to see if F was set in the 7 DM did you go into the Advanced Settings in the EasyBCD program and try reassociating the entry to F from D? If that doesn't work you simply delete the present XP entry and add a new one pointing at F.

Yes, I did exactly that, twice! Even though it showed correctly in "View" as "F" after correcting it in the "Advanced" mode I still could not boot into the XP option.
Did I edit the boot.ini file correctly?

The boot.ini file looks good there. You have it pointing to the second as it should be.

Hopefully you remembered to choose the "all files" option when going to save it by overwriting the original and didn't end up seeing "txt" instead of "ini" for the 3 digit file extension.

The reassociation of drive letter trick doesn't work in all occassions unfortunately where you then have to remove the first entry once everything is set to add a totally new in with the correct drive letter. That's about the only minor annoyance ever run into with the program but easy to fix with the new entry pointing to F not D.

If the XP install itself was complete you should be able to boot right into XP with the new entry seeing the correct drive letter. Provided everything else is in working order you should see XP load up without problems. Otherwise there will be a few last minute items that would need to worked out.

Night Hawk said:

The boot.ini file looks good there. You have it pointing to the second as it should be.

Hopefully you remembered to choose the "all files" option when going to save it by overwriting the original and didn't end up seeing "txt" instead of "ini" for the 3 digit file extension.

I made sure I did.

Night Hawk said:

The reassociation of drive letter trick doesn't work in all occassions unfortunately where you then have to remove the first entry once everything is set to add a totally new in with the correct drive letter. That's about the only minor annoyance ever run into with the program but easy to fix with the new entry pointing to F not D.

I wonder why the automatic always associates with drive letter D, although the OS resides on F.

Night Hawk said:

If the XP install itself was complete you should be able to boot right into XP with the new entry seeing the correct drive letter. Provided everything else is in working order you should see XP load up without problems. Otherwise there will be a few last minute items that would need to worked out.

Since Xp still doesn't load, what do we do now?

The default letter would be D. But you simply bring the droplist down when going to select another drive letter when in the Advanced Settings or when adding a new entry since that assumes the next drive letter available following C would be D.

When going to restart what was seen when you selected the XP entry?

Hopefully you removed the first and saw the new corrected one added in for the F letter. You're much closer now to having everything running. We simply have to find the last holdup and see that fixed to the need for a full reinstall of XP plus another repair of the 7 mbr.

Night Hawk said:

When going to restart what was seen when you selected the XP entry?

As I described earlier, when I select XP I get an error msg, saying I should insert the installation disc and do a "repair", and below that it had these lines:
FILE \NST\ntldr
The selected entry could not be located because the application is either missing or corrupted.

Night Hawk said:

Hopefully you removed the first and saw the new corrected one added in for the F letter.

Sure, as I said before.

Night Hawk said:

You're much closer now to having everything running. We simply have to find the last holdup and see that fixed to the need for a full reinstall of XP plus another repair of the 7 mbr.

Yes, what is the last holdup?

Since XP didn't load it's likely you will need to reinstall or perform a repair install of XP if you are not able to fix the "FILE \NST\ntldr" error you are mentioning. That tends to suggest that the installation may have incomplete to start with.

If you are forced into one of those two one guide explaining how to go about a repair install is seen at How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

I already did a repair install, which didn't change anything except that I couldn't boot into either OS after, and had to use the rescue CD to get W7 working again.
So all I can think of is doing a new clean install of XP, and see if that works. Where is that damn "NST/ntldr" supposed to come from, if it didn't get installed the first time around?