Dual Booting Windows 7 and Windows Vista

[georges5443]

For the last 2 years I've had my PC setup to Dual Boot from either Windows Vista Home Premium Edition x32 or Windows 7 Professional Edition x64. The Windows Vista drive had only a capacity of 34.4GBt and had given up the ghost. So I chose to format and re-install Windows Vista onto this small drive. The drive is working like new but now the PC boots into Vista and I cannot boot into Windows 7. I know that I should get a hold of the Windows 7 installation disk and repair the installation but unfortunately I've been moving around a lot and can find everyone of my installation discs except the Windows 7 Professional. Can anyone offer me advice on how to re-establish my Dual Boot without the use of an installation disc? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[AddRAM]

You could try Easy BCD. But more then likely you will have to download the Iso and do a startup repair.

 

[seavixen32]

In the absence of an installation disc, you can create a repair disc and use that to fix the master boot record.

If you can't access your own computer you can use a different one to create the repair disc.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

 

[gregrocker]

Normally Vista would configure the Dual Boot when reinstalled. There may be reasons it didn't related to the configuration which we can see better if you'll post up a screenshot of your maximized Disk Management drive map with listings. Screen Shots

If the configuration is okay then it should work to install EasyBCD to Vista to add Win7 on the Add OS tab. Choose Download free for limited, non-commercial use. You can ignore giving the email info as the download is free and will proceed just by clicking Download.

 

[georges5443]

Disk Management Drive Map

As requested please find attached an image of my Drive Map. Any comments appreciated.

 

[gregrocker]

Why are all of the other HD's marked Active? Only an OS partition should be marked Active, except in a Dual Boot where the System boot files are contained on one partition - which in this case should be C.

So mark all other partitions than C Inactive: Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

Then install EasyBCD to C and add Win7 by drive letter, name and type, Save, reboot to Dual Boot menu.

 

[georges5443]

Thank you for your feedback. I was able to locate my copy of Windows 7 Professional x64 and was able to recover Windows 7. So I can now dual boot into both Vista and Windows 7. I have checked the status of the drives in Disk Management and all drives are still marked as "active" including the OS drives C and D. Should I de-active either or these drives or the remaining drives as you recommended in your last posting? Can you please explain why they should not be marked as "active".

 

[seavixen32]

Gregrocker is one of our experts on partitioning and all his advice is good.

There can only be one active partition on a hard drive and that should be the partition that contains the bootloader files.

If you have more than one active partition on your hard drive it can render your computer unbootable.

Any partitions on your hard drive that do not contain the boot files need to be made inactive.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197157-partition-mark-inactive.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

 

[gregrocker]

I have checked the status of the drives in Disk Management and all drives are still marked as "active" including the OS drives C and D. Should I de-active either or these drives or the remaining drives as you recommended in your last posting? Can you please explain why they should not be marked as "active".

I already explained why here:

Why are all of the other HD's marked Active? Only an OS partition should be marked Active, except in a Dual Boot where the System boot files are contained on one partition - which in this case should be C.

So mark all other partitions than C Inactive: Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

Then install EasyBCD to C and add Win7 by drive letter, name and type, Save, reboot to Dual Boot menu.

Please post back the latest screenshot of your maximized Disk Management drive map and listings using the Snipping TOol in Start Menu so we can see the current configuration.

 

[AddRAM]

When you use the Windows Disk Management snap-in tool to mark your primary partition as active, the computer may not start up if the partition marked as active does not contain the Windows boot files (or boot files for another operating system).

This problem occurs because on Intel-based computers, the system partition must be a primary partition that has been marked as active for startup purposes. This partition must be located on the disk that the computer gains access to when starting up the computer. There can be only one active system partition at a time. If you want to use another operating system, you must first mark its system partition as active before restarting the computer.