How to make bootup manager appear in multi boott setup?

Here is my problem. I had a 32 bit Vista installed on my machine first. Then I installed Windows 7 on another partition, thinking that I'd have a dual boot set up. But the second OS became the default system to appear after a bootup and the bootup manager did not appear at all.

So I tried creating another partition and installing another OS there -- this time XP. Now XP became the default OS, and bootup manager still did not appear.

Using EasyBCD, I made sure that the other OSes were properly recorded in the bootup manager. They were. But still...the bootup manager did not appear during bootup.

What do you think I should do? Obviously Windows' bootup manager is somehow impaired. Should I try GRUB?

Hi picardo,


Post a screenshot of Disk Management and the contents of bcd from the Easybcd program.

Ok. Here it is. I deleted XP and installed another version of Vista in the meantime. But this only resulted in having now 2 versions of vista in the bootup manager. So, I guess half of my problem is sovled. I can see the bootup manager, but I still cannot see the Windows 7 as an option. :-(

I also found this KnowledgeBase article about a similar problem: Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration

It seems related in that installing an earlier version of Windows causes a later version not to start, but I don't know how the instructions can be changed to apply to Windows 7. And I couldn't find a similar article for Vista and 7.

Try booting 7 dvd to system recovery options and running startup repair - may take a few runs.

System Recovery Options

That worked! Wooooohoooo!

I thank you sir for all your help.

You're welcome - have fun.