Help! I've screwed up my XP partition

It seems simple: You need to Add/Remove Entries, adding XP by name and drive to the boot. This is how it normally works.

However, the fact that it is logical is a new one for me.

OK, I'll try that and report back

Well, this is weird... I added XP on drive E, but it reports that it is in drive I:
Entry #2

Name: XP
BCD ID: {84c6ec8a-bd43-11de-a0eb-b71342ba7037}
Drive: I:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

Retrying didn't solve anything

It may be rejecting it because it is logical.

Study and try the EasyBCD Diagnostics Center. It's been awhile since I used it but I believe it is user friendly and fairly automated, although you should understand it before trying.

A little help here?

No joy... I went through both options in the diagnostics center, and it still won't work: with the CD in the drive I can get to 7, and without it the computer won't start (it says something like "BCD is missing content", code 0xc0000034)

I tried to use the recovery console in the XP disc, but it says it won't work because "the drive contains one or more errors". Must be related to the logical drive thing

Do you think it'd work if I made a new primary partition and copied all the data from the XP drive there?

Well you should be able to boot up WIn7 by runnning Startup repair several times.

Your idea of copying the XP drive over to a newly formatted Primary partition seems possible. I just used Paragon Partition Pro 9 bootable to copy an XP partition and it added to the boot menu no problem. However, it wouldnt' let me format the parition beforehand, but required it to be unallocated space. I didn't bother to check if I could change the partition type since it was/is NTFS. However your partitioning/copying tool might allow changes while copying to a Primary Partition.

It shouldn't hurt anything to try copying it a few different ways, since the worst case is an XP reinstall anyway. BTW do you really want XP going forward, since most of us have left it behind shortly after dual booting?

Someone should know if imaging could also accomplish this.

I don't think it's worth trying to repair the 7 startup, I'll just delete 7 when I get all this sorted out.

I have no partition program, I'd have to use disk management from within 7... should work all right anyway.
I'm going to try and copy XP to a new partition, but I'll want to back up everything before, and that's gonna take a while. I'll tell you how it went when it's done.

Thanks very much for the help

(phew... just realized I almost screwed up completely, 'cause I didn't have the option to show system files enabled... close call...)

Eviellan said:

Hey there!
I tried to set up a dualboot of 7 and XP, so I made a new partition from XP (named S: ) and installed 7 there.
It finished installing all right and booted to 7, but when I restarted no boot manager appeared and I could only run XP.
So I decided to follow the steps from Method 2 here
Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP
but I must have screwed something up very badly 'cause I can only access 7 now.
I went into the disk management tool and things have gone weird there: S: drive is now labeled C: (and I can't change it), and my XP drive (that was C: ) is now a logical drive (wtf?) labeled E:
Any suggestions on how to fix this?
Thanks in advance

Really simple Question. did you boot to the DVD and then install Win 7 on S: (recommended way.) or did you do it from XP.(not recommended.)

gregrocker said:

BTW do you really want XP going forward, since most of us have left it behind shortly after dual booting?

In fact I planned on reverting to XP and forgetting about 7. XP has always worked perfectly for me, and 7 is giving me plenty of trouble.

That said, if most of you consider 7 to be much better than XP, I'll take your word for it and give it another try, but I'll want to be able to access XP in case things go FUBAR again.