Win7 is trespassing

[madhatter]

after merely thinking about it for a year i finally installed 32bit win7
i have 3 drives
on the first i have 32bit winxp and 64bit winxp on two 31gb partitions
everything was working great
then i installed 32bit win7 on one of the two 65gb partitions i had ready on hdd 2
the unpleasant surprise came when i tried to boot up my winxp
apparently win7 infiltrated boot information on the hdd with my xp systems on it instead of just keeping everything on its own partition and hdd
this opens many questions for me:
should i have unplugged the winxp drive before installing win7 to prevent this?
are there other ways of keeping the systems completey isolated on their drives?
will the win7 installation work if i remove/format the partitions with winxp on them?
will my winxp systems work if i delete win7?

i find it extremely annoying that when i want to use my 64bit winxp i first need to click on older windows in one boot screen and then on another boot screen i select 64bit winxp
i can preselect the most desired option in both screens and reduce counters, but why 2 boot screens in the first place?

heres my boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER

and my boot.bak (does this even do anything? i deleted it to get rid of the w7 boot screen and nothing happened)

[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

my intention is to compare all 4 systems (xp-32, xp-64, w7-32 and w7-64) and then install the best 2 on my 3rd drive for optimum compatibility with all software
can i get everything in order by installing 64bit win7 in a particular way?

 

[Tews]

Common Installation Problems and Their Solutions

 

[squall leonhart]

Windows NT 6.x migrates the primary bootloader on the primary drive.

If you didn't want this, you should've configured the windows 7 drive as the primary drive in the bios prior to installation.

 

[fseal]

yeah actually win2k and XP would do the same thing if you weren't careful (the results were not quite as drastic but still frequently not what you expect). Also, it could cause windows to install itself on like drive E sometimes :/

It is and always has been good practice to not have any other drives hooked up when installing any version of windows But due to the dual boot screen thing even more so on W7 it seems, the entore boot loader process is completely different in Vista/W7 which is why it does that.

However, I would keep searching to see if you can't just add your other windows boot to the new W7 boot loader. I'm pretty sure you can, though I can't give step by step details. Need to look up BCDEdit I believe, see if that can help.

 

[squall leonhart]

where multiple installations of a former os is installed, the windows 7 boot loader will launch the NT5 boot loader.

 

[madhatter]

i will have to look into bcdedit i guess...
but is there no simple known way to fix this?
it should be just a matter of a few values in the appropriate files, right?
boot.ini alone doesnt cut it
boot.bak seems to be only for show
which files do i need to edit and where are they?

 

[fseal]

BCDedit now edits what used to be the boot.ini which no longer exists in Windows 7.

This is to protect the OS frm malware being able to easily rewrite the boot.ini like they could on XP.

It does make things a bit harder to do simple things but is much more secure.

 

[gregrocker]

I assume you want to choose which OS HD to boot via BIOS boot order, or the one-time Boot Menu key given on first boot screen.

You are correct that in order to configure it this way during install, you needed to unplug the XP HD, set Win7 HD to boot first, install 7, then replug XP HD, set preferred HD to boot first, then trigger other HD if needed with one-time Boot Menu key.

This keeps both HD's independent to come and go as you please, whereas a Windows-managed Dual boot interlocks them.

To achieve this retroactively, Mark Win7 partition Active in Disk Management and set first to boot in BIOS boot order (after DVD), power down to unplug the XP HD, then boot into Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots until Win7 starts. Now you can plug XP back in and boot via BIOS boot order and shortcut key.

 

[madhatter]

yea, so...
i used easybcd to remove the annoying win7 boot screen
my old dual boot appears operational
the thing did it all with the click of a button
some garbage files seem to remain, but they practically take up no space so for safestys sake...
i assume win7 is broken now, but thats no tragedy as the installation is less than a day old with nothing to be lost there...
i wouldnt be surprised if the crazy thing still fired up when asked to though
regardless, will installing my systems with the others unplugged let me swap drives as i see fit?
i mean like take the data cable from hdd1 and swap it with hdd2?
i dont quite understand whats written in those boot files, but seems like the physical drives have numbers, so drives changing places might still confuse the boot file even if i readjusted the position via bios, no?

 

[gregrocker]

Just follow the steps I gave above to boot via the BIOS, so your drives can move around as you want.

Since the XP dual boot is on the same HD, it won't interfere with Win7 booting via the BIOS.

But you'll need to recover the MBR into Win7, so follow the steps I gave in my last paragraph above.

 

[madhatter]

thanks mates, everythings working just like i want it now
well, except for one thing
i have 32bit and 64bit win7 installed and the boot screen lists them both as "Windows 7" which is absurd
i tried looking into the win boot options, but didnt see any way of changing the names

 

[fseal]

Again it's back to BCDEdit. The command will look soething like this:

bcdedit /set {current} description "Windows 7 - 32bit”

where "{current}" is actually the identifier of the line item you want to change the description for.

Use BCDEdit to list the items to gettheir identifiers, then chage the desc.

Otherwise if you are talking about the boot.ini files fo rthe XP bootloader, just edit the file and hand change the line items description right there

 

[gregrocker]

You can relabel the Win7 partitions using EasyBCD.

I thought you were trying to set it up to boot via the BIOS. It appears you have a Windows-managed Multi-Boot menu instead.

What this means is that you can't remove any HD's without doing surgery on the BCD, lest your computer will not boot.

 

[madhatter]

ah cmon, i cant be that thick, now can i? got 2 different boot screens which load depending on the drive i pick in bios and they never appear in sequence so as far as im concerned its all good

anyway, both win7 are now meaningfully labelled
the procedure in easybcd was surprisingly obscure, but capable...

thanks again

 

[madhatter]

ok, this is beyond effin incredible now
months after i had installed everything to my utmost satisfaction i have the sequence of 2 windows boot screens again
for a nice while i could decide to boot either xp 32/64 or w7 32/64 by selecting either the xp or w7 drive in bios
now when i boot the xp drive i get to choose between w7 and older version of windows after which i get to choose from xp 32/64
i have no idea why
i didnt reinstall any of the 4 OS nor did i tinker with any windows boot settings
i find it utterly unbelievable that w7 has the nerve to just do this out of the blue without further notice
anyone experienced this before? can i stop it?

 

[gregrocker]

Look at boot tab in Win7 and XP msconfig to see if the stray Win7 listing is there to remove.

If not, Install EasyBCD 2.0 to the OS where Windows Dual Boot was originally set up..

On Edit Boot Menu tab, remove Win7 listing from Dual Boot.

That should do it.

 

[madhatter]

well, this is what i see in easybcd under xp64

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Earlier Version of Windows
Timeout: 6 seconds
Boot Drive: C:\

Entry #1
Name: Earlier Version of Windows
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr

Entry #2
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {b75f5281-78cb-11df-bdcb-836ea5548e79}
Drive: K:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

i guess i will need to test this by unplugging the xp drive to be sure...
whats bugging me is whether the w7 drive still boots on its own (it does when i select it with xp drive connected, however that could be bios just jumping to the xp drive cos the w7 drive doesnt boot, right?)
if both drives still have their own independent mbr, then the additional boot screen could even be seen as useful to a certain extent when i have both timers set to 6s
yet just how much liberty does w7 take with my machine anyway? what will it decide on its own next?
i wish i could stop it from simply deciding things

 

[gregrocker]

This most likely happened because you chose (wisely) to boot via BIOS, but still had a windows-managed Dual Boot configured in either XP or Win7.

In order to get rid of the Windows-managed Dual Boot, you need to remove it on the Edit Boot menu tab of EasyBCD 2.0 from the OS where it was originally set up.

If Win7 autoconfigured the Dual Boot, then it needs to be removed from Win7 so try that first.