XP on one drive, 7 on another

[crunchie]

XP on one drive, 7 on another[Resolved]

I have a problem and see that it has been raised and solved several times here.
My system is in system specs.
I bought myself all these new goodies a few weeks back and set about putting it all together etc.
Once connected, I fired up and partitioned my Raptor, installed XP on one partition and 7 on the other. This was done in IDE mode in BIOS.
Once finished everything worked as it should.
I have just now decided to go with an SSD, so I connected up, went into BIOS and set up AHCI and selected Sata type.
The SSD is in Sata port 0 and my Raptor is in Sata 1.
I installed XP onto the Raptor (which is still partitioned), installed the AHCI drivers during install and all went well. I did not install any motherboard drivers upon boot, I just made sure XP was working.
I then popped 7 CD in and rebooted and installed 7 onto the SSD.
Again, the install went as it should have done with no hiccups.
The problem though is that upon start-up, I do not get the option of dual booting. It just goes straight into 7.
I have followed a couple of guides for using easyBCD, but I cannot get it to work as it does in the guide and I am a bit of a newbie with messing with the MBR. I already wrecked it once and re-installed .
I have looked in computer management and it is showing the partition that XP is installed on as a logical drive. Not sure exactly what that means, but none of the others are showing that.

SSD is shown as disk 2 there, but I am not sure why. It is definitely in Sata port 0.
'F' and 'H' is another drive that I only just connected 5 minutes before I took the screenie. Only drives that were connected to the mobo during install was the Raptor and the SSD.
Is there a way I can fix this without it involving a re-install/repair, or anything that I cannot understand ?

I have no concern actually with reformatting the Raptor and installing XP again if I have too.

 

[Barman58]

XP will not run on a logical drive - only on a primary drive, (this restriction does not apply to Vista or win7).

If you check out Magic Server Partition Manager Software - Resize partition for Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2000. this should allow you to change the partition type to primary without a complete re-build.

you can run the partition manager on the win7 installation or there is a boot disk available.

Once you have the correct partition type you should be able to use easyBCD to add the entry for XP to your boot

 

[crunchie]

Thank you .
One thing I forgot to mention is that XP will boot and run fine, provided I disconnect the SSD from the mobo.

 

[Barman58]

OK have re-read your disk management and one thing that worries me is that you have multiple Active and System Reserved partitions

In my experience this will cause issues - the active drive is the one containing the boot files and with multiple active partitions the system is likely to be confused.

The system reserved partitions are created by win7 installs to a blank drive and are set as the boot drive (active) , automatically. This is a safety feature to prevent deleting the boot sector in multi boot scenarios.

I would be minded to remove all bar the one system reserved partition (the latest on the SSD should be the best to keep)

I would also remove the active partition on the drive that was added after the recent rebuild, (can only assume the partitions here are remnants of previous installs)

One thing that would help is if you could give partition names to all the partitions and re-post the disk management screen (names can be given using the windows disk management)

 

[crunchie]

Couldn't find where/how to rename the drives .
I have removed the latest drive and changed the logical to primary.
'D' is the Raptor partition with XP installed. 'E' is an empty partition on the Raptor.
'C' is the SSD.

 

[Barman58]

Ok If E: is an empty drive this needs to be non active

I am assuming that the system will boot if you disconnect the raptor? (this would prove that the SSD is booting win7)

I think from your description, that the XP boot is still on the raptor and is causing the unused partition to show as active.

If you can boot from the SSD without the raptor connected then I would delete the unused partition on the raptor completely, and follow the instructions on the EasyBCD site to add XP to the system

Installing XP After Vista - EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

(applies to win7 as well as vista)

hopefully after this you should be good to go

As for the drive naming - for those partitions with drive letters this can be set fro computer - right click drive and rename

 

[crunchie]

Ok. Disconnected the Raptor and 7 boots ok. I have deleted the unused partition. Is it alright to format it after deleting, or should I just leave it as unallocated space?

Following your link, it says to do the changes from within XP. I have to disconnect the SSD in order to do that.
Will I still be able to fulfill the instructions correctly?

Thanks very much for your help so far. I appreciate it.

 

[Barman58]

Sorry for the confusion - the guide assumes you have just installed XP and the system boots by default into XP - my Bad

If you run BCDedit from the windows 7 install you should be able to add an XP entry and point it to the correct partition on the raptor. this is because the xp bootloader is no longer on any drive and BCDedit should add the correct entries to the win7 one.

you can do what ever you want with the unpartitioned space on the raptor - I would recccommend that you set a logical drive for data or a primary if you intend to add further operating systems (windows only recognises a max of 3 primaries, so is best to retain these for OS use)

 

[crunchie]

Thank you. you are a life saver . I tried again to do what I was doing earlier and this time (on the 2nd attempt) it worked . Finally I can relax.

Thank you once again for your time.

 

[Barman58]

Glad to hear you have things working.

Now may be a good time to consider your backup strategy

If you have space on your system it may be worth while creating system images of your two Operating systems and your system reserved partition

using something like Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download will allow you to image your partitions and provide you with a quick way to return to this point in the future should you need to, (hopefully never needed )

I would also advise that you keep your user data on a separate partition, (with separate backups), to the OS's. This way if you totally lose an OS your data is safer

 

[crunchie]

I have read around the net that with an SSD, seeing how space is at a premium, it would be wise to move the users, program files and program files (x86) to a separate hard drive. Is there an easy way to do that? I have seen the tutorial here for moving just the 'users' folder, but not the rest.

 

[Barman58]

Though I agree in principle with this - I have yet to see anyone who has got this to work reliably.

Of course all the user folders that have a location tab should be moved (I do this as a default on all systems ), and it may be useful to install programs on another drive for those that give you the option, or are not needed to be actually installed.

I would not advise that you try to redirect program installs that do not give an option to do so or the retrospectively attempt to move programs whatsoever. With so many developers still using non standard registry hooks and locations, the potential for major issues is too great

 

[crunchie]

No worries. I will stick with the basics .

Thanks again.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I have read around the net that with an SSD, seeing how space is at a premium, it would be wise to move the users, program files and program files (x86) to a separate hard drive. Is there an easy way to do that? I have seen the tutorial here for moving just the 'users' folder, but not the rest.

Hello crunchie, welcome to Seven Forums!



Just choose another location to install progs/apps to as you install them, I do that and have had no problems with it though I do let security types install where they choose, space isn't that critical just install any games to another HDD and you should be fine.

 

[crunchie]

Cool. Thanks for the welcome