Windows Booting to Wrong XP Partition

iseeuu said:

Nikolay said:

I want to boot to the XP on disk 0. Also, how do I create a 100MB "Reserved System" partition?

I have just done this for myself, on my test system, in order to help people with some screen shots. I am not done yet, but here is what I did.

I shrank the first partition on my hard drive to leave 102MB of space. Created a primary (simple) partition, formatted it with NTFS, and set it "Active". Used this Tutorial to alter the boot code in the mbr: MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

Then I used my Repair CD (or the 7 DVD) and did the "Startup Repair" twice (might need to be done 3 times). Once 7 was booting from here, I gave the "System Partition" a temporary drive letter S: and copied the three files (boot.ini, NTLDR, and NTDETECT.COM) from XP to S: (I then removed the S: drive letter)

From an elevated command prompt in Windows 7, I typed these four commands:

Bcdedit /create {legacy} /d “WinXP ProSp3”

Bcdedit /set {legacy} device boot

Bcdedit /set {legacy} path \ntldr

Bcdedit /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

When I rebooted the menu entry for XP booted into XP

Attachment 49648

https://www.sevenforums.com/installat...dual-boot.html

Cheers!
Robert

That's quite a lot to take in. I'll save this for another time, but I will get to it hopefully later today. Thanks for the help.

Also, I cloned the XP partition to XP WD

Then they would be identical. Where did you add the WD?

Could you provide a screen shot of Disk Management.

Expand the window so we can see all drives. See if it's set as active

The XP boot files would not be on the c: drive as this is the Windows 7 partition

Nikolay said:

iseeuu said:

Nikolay said:

I want to boot to the XP on disk 0. Also, how do I create a 100MB "Reserved System" partition?

I have just done this for myself, on my test system, in order to help people with some screen shots. I am not done yet, but here is what I did.

I shrank the first partition on my hard drive to leave 102MB of space. Created a primary (simple) partition, formatted it with NTFS, and set it "Active". Used this Tutorial to alter the boot code in the mbr: MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

Then I used my Repair CD (or the 7 DVD) and did the "Startup Repair" twice (might need to be done 3 times). Once 7 was booting from here, I gave the "System Partition" a temporary drive letter S: and copied the three files (boot.ini, NTLDR, and NTDETECT.COM) from XP to S: (I then removed the S: drive letter)

From an elevated command prompt in Windows 7, I typed these four commands:

Bcdedit /create {legacy} /d “WinXP ProSp3”

Bcdedit /set {legacy} device boot

Bcdedit /set {legacy} path \ntldr

Bcdedit /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

When I rebooted the menu entry for XP booted into XP

Attachment 49648

https://www.sevenforums.com/installat...dual-boot.html

Cheers!
Robert

That's quite a lot to take in. I'll save this for another time, but I will get to it hopefully later today. Thanks for the help.

Yes, I completely understand!! ASAP, I will have some screen shots for each step, to make it easier.

For now, if you can find the boot.ini file your boot loader is using, you can get the correct XP to boot. Also I second reghakr's suggestion to change the boot order in the bios (that would move the correct XP from disk(1) to disk(0) ... if the system can boot correctly) or even unplug all hard drives except the one you you are testing (and perhaps reinstall XP) to get the boot loader to see the correct one?

Let us know how it goes and how we can help!

Cheers!
Robert

I would suggest adding the 100MB "Reserved System" to your Windows 7 install. There are some atvantages of having it, one being making dual booting easier.

How would you go about doing that other than doing a complete re-install.

I use GParted to setup all my drives (with no 100MB "reserved partition") and I'm dual-booting Windows 7 Pro and Vista Home Premium perfectly.

I just noticed that the other XP partition is not set as active.. That might be why.

reghakr said:

I would suggest adding the 100MB "Reserved System" to your Windows 7 install. There are some atvantages of having it, one being making dual booting easier.

How would you go about doing that other than doing a complete re-install.

I use GParted to setup all my drives (with no 100MB "reserved partition") and I'm dual-booting Windows 7 Pro and Vista Home Premium perfectly.

Yes of course it can be done, and no a complete reinstall is not necessary to add the Windows Vista / 7 bootloader to the 100MB "Reserved System" partition. I just did it this morning.

For the technically adept, dual booting is just another configuration. For the beginner, dual booting can be very confusing, even with Windows 7. Not all OS's behave the same way, but if there is an "Active" partition present on the hard drive during installation, doesn't the boot code go into the "Active" partition? So if XP is already installed when 7 is added, the boot code goes into XP? If 7 is already installed with no system partition when XP is added, doesn't the boot code go into the 7 partition? Or will XP mark the 7 partition "Inactive" and mark its own partition "Active" during the install? If so, then the mbr points only to XP and will not boot to 7 without editing or configuring. When you add more partitions, like and OEM RECOVERY partition to the mix, you add more complexiety to identifying the correct drive letter or position in your configuration. As Nikolay said "That is quite a lot to take in."

What is noce about the 100MB system partition, is all the boot code goes there so moving, changeing partitions on the hard drive does not break the entire system. Plus there are system repair options abailable from that partition to help fix problems. Adding XP to the Windows boot menu is as easy as copying three files and executing 4 commands.

Nikolay said:

I just noticed that the other XP partition is not set as active.. That might be why.

Nikolay, don't change the "Active" partition.

Windows allows one "Active" partition on each hard drive. If you installed Windows 7 first, then it is the active partition and has the boot code for that hard drive. If you make the XP partition active on that hard drive you will not be able to boot to either 7 or XP.

Was able to locate the boot.ini file, had to use this command in cmd:

attrib c:\boot.ini -s -h -r

This is my boot.ini contents:

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

Nikolay said:

Was able to locate the boot.ini file, had to use this command in cmd:

attrib c:\boot.ini -s -h -r

This is my boot.ini contents:

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

Winxp WD is on partition(2)

It worked, I was finally able to boot onto the right XP partition. Just one problem though, everytime I start up, I get a "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close" error. Right now I'm running sfc /scannow.