Windows 7 boot problem

[sylar]

Hi,

I am having a problem with my windows 7. I have two hard drives and my main hard drive (500GB) i have windows XP on which i have had for a while. I thought i would purchase windows 7 to put on my other hard drive to check it out as i thought windows XP was getting a little old. So i installed windows 7 to my second hard drive (80GB) and everything went fine but the problem is when it comes to the screen where it wants me to select which operating system to load it only appears for 1 second then windows 7 boots on its own. It doesn't give me time to select my windows XP OS. So i thought that maybe i have the boot priority wrong but i dont.

So i decide to unplug the hard drive with windows 7 in so it would just boot to windows xp on its own BUT then i get the WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER telling me windows failed to start because of a recent hardware or software change. so then i click Enter to continue and it STILL gives me the option to boot to windows 7 or xp. Tried clicking windows 7 again but get the same error. How does it even KNOW i have windows 7 installed because i unplugged the hard drive.

i just want to be able to turn on my pc..then it give me two OS's to choose from without it booting to windows 7 on its own.

sorry if this was confusing and sorry bout my grammer.

J

 

[alphanumeric]

Try this, first plug both drives back in and boot to windows 7. Then run msconfig and go to the "Boot" Tab. XP and Windows 7 should both be listed. Now you can select the default OS and increase the number of seconds in the "Timeout" box to give yourself more time to select an OS.

EDIT: Just so you understand what is going on: The boot loader is actually on the XP drive. If you remove that drive you won't be able to boot into windows 7 even if you do change your boot order. Also since 7 is the default, if you remove that drive, the boot loader won't be able to find it and give you the error message you mentioned. It won't try to boot to XP unless you select it from the menu even if it can't find 7.

 

[sylar]

ahh i see now. i was really confused as to why it was doing it.

the problem i am having now is that my 500gb hard drive is not showing up in windows 7. When i first load up W7 the hard drive appears at the bottom as W7 tries to find drivers for it and it says tht its been installed succefully. after a restart its still not showing up. dont know whats wrong with it. Dont think it likes me

thank you so much for your quick help btw.

 

[sylar]

ive now got the hard drive to show up in explorer but when i go to MSconfig it doesnt show up. only shows windows 7.

strange

 

[sylar]

ahh fixed it now. Just restarted the computer and it showed up in msconfig.

the timer was on 2 seconds :S chnaged it to 65 and tested it. works fine

thanks for all your help

btw the forum looks cool

 

[alphanumeric]

lol, 2 seconds, no wonder you had a hard time selcting XP. Blink and you'd miss it.

 

[Tews]

Glad its all sorted!