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More W7/XP dual boot problems

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More W7/XP dual boot problems

Postby kevinherring » Sat Apr 03, 2010 11:26 pm

Hi, I am having some dual boot problems that I need some help on. I bought DualBootPro because I though it was going to be "smart" i.e. automatically ensure that everything was correct in order to dual boot (i.e. create bcd entries, ensure the boot.ini was correct, and that ntldr etc were in the correct place). I was a bit disappointed to find that it didn't really seem to offer anything over *stolen software reference*. Anyway, if you can help me on these forums, it will have been $10 well spent.

So here was my situation before:
1 HD in my laptop. 3 partitions:
0 - a 40mb Dell recovery partition, no drive letter.
1 - C: A 45GB partition with Windows XP
2 - D: The rest of the space used to store data.

I wanted to install Windows 7 as a dual boot, but probably getting rid of XP soon, so I didn't want it to remain as my first partition. So, using Gparted I shrunk partition 2 at the start of the partition and inserted another, which gave me:
0 - a 40mb Dell recovery partition, no drive letter.
1 - C: A 45GB partition with Windows XP
2 - A partition with 25GB space.
3 - The rest of the space used to store data.

The using ghost I cloned the Windows XP partion to my new 25GB partition. I did not check whether the new partition would boot at this point (foolish).

I then installed Windows 7 onto partition 1 (completely erasing it during the installation). Windows 7 did not detect Windows XP on partition 2 so did not create a boot menu for it.

So I manually created an entry using bcdedit, which worked as expected. I had to copy boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.exe onto the Windows 7 partition to get this working. However once it tried to boot into Windows XP I get the following error:
Code: Select all
Windows could not start because the following file is missing
or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file

Which would suggest to me that the boot.ini file is looking at the wrong partition. So I created multiple entries in the boot.ini pointing to different partitions, to no avail, other partitions complained that they could not find hal.dll.

So here is the current situation:
Code: Select all
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    OEM                 39 MB    31 KB
  Partition 2    Primary             45 GB    40 MB <--this is Windows 7
  Partition 4    Primary             24 GB    45 GB <-- this is Windows XP
  Partition 3    Primary            163 GB    69 GB

DISKPART>


bcdedit:
Code: Select all
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {814725f3-3f6b-11df-9c9f-f6ee1630c8f7}
displayorder            {ntldr}
                        {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier              {ntldr}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \ntldr
description             Windows XP

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {814725f5-3f6b-11df-9c9f-f6ee1630c8f7}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {814725f3-3f6b-11df-9c9f-f6ee1630c8f7}
nx                      OptIn


Contents of partition 1:
Code: Select all
C:\>dir /a
 Volume in drive C is Windows 7
 Volume Serial Number is 703E-B8AA

 Directory of C:\

03/04/2010  01:49 PM    <DIR>          $Recycle.Bin
03/04/2010  09:35 PM             1,024 .rnd
04/04/2010  07:54 AM    <DIR>          Boot
03/04/2010  10:17 PM               545 boot.ini
14/07/2009  11:38 AM           383,562 bootmgr
04/04/2010  07:54 AM             8,192 BOOTSECT.BAK
03/04/2010  04:15 PM    <DIR>          dell
14/07/2009  03:08 PM    <JUNCTION>     Documents and Settings [C:\Users]
03/04/2010  04:17 PM    <DIR>          Intel
03/04/2010  02:16 PM    <DIR>          MSOCache
14/04/2008  10:00 PM            47,564 NTDETECT.COM
14/04/2008  10:00 PM           250,048 ntldr
14/07/2009  01:20 PM    <DIR>          PerfLogs
03/04/2010  04:48 PM    <DIR>          Program Files
03/04/2010  11:15 PM    <DIR>          Program Files (x86)
03/04/2010  09:35 PM    <DIR>          ProgramData
03/04/2010  01:49 PM    <DIR>          Recovery
04/04/2010  08:28 AM    <DIR>          System Volume Information
03/04/2010  01:49 PM    <DIR>          Users
04/04/2010  08:41 AM    <DIR>          Windows


Boot.ini
Code: Select all
C:\>type boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional0" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional1" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional3" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


When in Windows 7, the XP drive is assigned as E:.
ntoskernel.exe does exist:
Code: Select all
E:\>dir WINDOWS\system32\nto*
 Volume in drive E is Windows XP
 Volume Serial Number is C2CE-8572

 Directory of E:\WINDOWS\system32

09/12/2009  05:26 AM         2,145,280 ntoskrnl.exe
               1 File(s)      2,145,280 bytes
               0 Dir(s)   3,710,963,712 bytes free


So to recap:
The Windows 7 boot menu works fine. Two entries, one for Windows 7, one for Windows XP.
Windows 7 boots fine.
Selecting Windows XP brings up the old-style boot menu with 4 options.
Selecting Partition 2 complains that it cannot find ntoskernel.exe.
Selecting Partitions 0,1 or 3 complains that it cannot find hal.dll (which is pretty much what I would expect as there is not Windows installed on these partitions)

I'm all out of ideas!
Thanks in advance.
Kevin
PRO New Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2010 1:20 pm

Re: More W7/XP dual boot problems

Postby yeshuas » Sun Apr 04, 2010 12:43 am

You might try this just to see if is corrects your problem

1. Insert the Microsoft Windows XP CD. Note: If you have a recovery CD or a restore CD and not a Microsoft Windows XP CD it is likely the below steps will not resolve your issue.
2. Reboot the computer, as the computer is starting you should see a message to press any key to boot from the CD. When you see this message press any key.
3. In the Microsoft Windows XP setup menu press the R key to enter the recovery console.
4. Select the operating system you wish to fix, and then enter the administrator password.
5. Type expand d:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ c:\windows\system32
6. You will then be prompted if you wish to overwrite the file type Y and press enter to overwrite the file.
7. Type exit to reboot the computer.
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Re: More W7/XP dual boot problems

Postby kevinherring » Sun Apr 04, 2010 12:21 pm

Fixed it!
And the information needed was all in the post. The diskpart listing clearly shows that XP is on Partition 4, not 2 as I thought.
Changed boot.ini and it booted into Xp. Well, almost booted, when I get to the log in screen, pressing anything on the keyboard causes the mouse and keyboard to lockup. Weird, but another post altogether.
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