Win XP dualboot Win7 (XP HDD failure)

[Midinut]

I desperately need assistance!

I am running XP SP3 on one HDD and installed Win7 Enterprise on another HDD thus dualbooting from XP. Today it would appear that the XP HDD has given in. It is not picked up during boot. Win7 however would now not start. During boot up it requests that the boot media is inserted.

I stuck the Win7 disk in and booted from that and tried a startup repair with no success.

Please help!

 

[Hopalong X]

This may help.
It shows how to restore boot with your Win7 disk. It doesn't fix getting the XP but gets you back to Win7.

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

You should be able to select "start up repair" when you get to step 4 in that tutorial.

It has always worked for me without any further steps.
Hope that helps.
Mike

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Midinut, welcome to Seven Forums!





Have a look at Option Two at the tutorial at the link below: be sure to have a look at the rest of the tutorial for how to run the startup repairs.

Be sure to disconnect the HDD XP is on before you run the repairs so it doesn't conflict with the process.


Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

 

[Midinut]

Hi Guys - firstly thanks a million for the quick response.

I tried Option 2 ans set the partition as Active but on bootup it now says that NTLDR is missing.

I also checked MS supports and got to this part:

1. Click Repair your computer.
2. Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.

At this stage it does not show my C drive? Suggest loading drivers??

1. In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
2. Type Bootrec.exe, and then press ENTER.

Getting nowhere fast me thinks!

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Disconnect the XP Hard Disk Drive and boot the Windows disk and as 7 is marked as active already, run the 3 separate startup repairs with a system restart between each repair to write the new boot files to the Windows 7 HDD.

 

[Midinut]

Thanks a million guys! Bare Foot Kids...it is easier than I thought! Since I has XP installed first and that HDD packed in, all the problems started. Fixed in seconds.Minus XP now but Win7 runs as originally installed. PS Stay away from WD and Seagate. They let you down just before you can backup...no warning.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello again Midinut.





Glad to see you have it sorted and thanks for the update.