A Digital Age Deserves A Digital Leader

Win7/XP not dual booting

Forum rules
Please start your own topic for support with problems you experience. Even if it appears to be exactly the same as someone else's problem, system configurations differ significantly. Thank you.

It may take our support staff between 24-48 hours to respond to your problem. We are a small business and strive to answer your questions as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience.

Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby anttix » Mon May 17, 2010 8:02 pm

I installed Win7, which went fine, then installed XP, which also went fine, but I could only boot to XP. So I used the Win7 installation disc to 'repair' the win 7 installation. It worked, but I can now only boot to Win 7.

Browsing around your forums I found the guide for dualboot trouble shooting. I found ntldr and NTDETECT in G:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386. I'm showing hidden files and I'm showing system files, but I can't find boot.ini anywhere.

What do you guys suggest my next step should be?

Thanks in advance for you responses!
PRO New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 7:52 pm

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby yeshuas » Mon May 17, 2010 9:00 pm

A boot.ini can be created simply using e.g. notepad.

If you can post a imge of your Disk Management screen we will see if we can straighten your issue out.
Game Over!!!!!!!!
Image
ASUS Maximus V Gene MB
Windows 8 X64; Windows 7 X64; Windows 7 X86
Intel I5-3570K
16GB Corsair Vengeance Ram
eVGA GeForce GTX 550 TI
Corsair GS700 PS
1TB Seagate SATA 6.0Gb HD
Thermaltake Case
Software Development
User avatar
Posts: 5075
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:29 pm
Location: Chicago, IL
Real Name: Daniel Schmidt

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby anttix » Mon May 17, 2010 9:55 pm

That was quick!
Here's the image; Win 7 is on C: and XP is on G:
Image

They are both on a RAID0 which is made up of 1x300gb and 1x400gb
PRO New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 7:52 pm

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby yeshuas » Mon May 17, 2010 10:19 pm

Copy and paste the following files from where you found them to the root directory of the Windows 7 drive/partition; NTDETECT, ntldr and of course the boot.ini file after you create it. hopefully this will straighten your system out.

You can copy and paste the following into notepad and then save it to the root directory of the Windows 7 drive, and when asked for the name to save as call it boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
Game Over!!!!!!!!
Image
ASUS Maximus V Gene MB
Windows 8 X64; Windows 7 X64; Windows 7 X86
Intel I5-3570K
16GB Corsair Vengeance Ram
eVGA GeForce GTX 550 TI
Corsair GS700 PS
1TB Seagate SATA 6.0Gb HD
Thermaltake Case
Software Development
User avatar
Posts: 5075
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:29 pm
Location: Chicago, IL
Real Name: Daniel Schmidt

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby NT50 » Mon May 17, 2010 10:49 pm

Daniel.

He has the 100 meg System reserved partition.
You will ahve to assign a drive letter to the 100 meg System Reserved partition (Disk Management). Once done you will have to copy ntldr, NTDECT, and boot.ini to the root of that drive/partition. Make sure your boot.ini points to the correct locaton of XP. Insert your Windows 7 boot DVD and do a Startup repair. It may take two time for the startup repair to work.

It is good that Win7 creates the paritition without a drive letter to keep the system files from viruses and etc but is heck when trying to setup a dual boot. Once you assign the driver letter you will not be able to revert back to no drive letter for it.
Dogs Have Owners; Cats Have Staff
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 8220
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Jackson, TN USA
Real Name: Jeff Replogle

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby anttix » Mon May 17, 2010 10:51 pm

Thanks yeshuas. So I did that, stuck it with the other two in the Win7 root (C:), then finished off by following these instructions from the aforementioned guide:
"DualBootPro
8. Open DualBootPro and go to the "System Bootloader" screen
9. Select "Windows Vista or Windows 7" and then select All Drives

Note: Before continuing quit any I/O sensitive applications.

10. Click Install Bootloader"

I rebooted, got the choice screen, selected XP and got a message saying my ntldr is either corrupt or missing.

What next?
PRO New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 7:52 pm

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby NT50 » Mon May 17, 2010 10:55 pm

Read my post above your.......
Dogs Have Owners; Cats Have Staff
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 8220
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Jackson, TN USA
Real Name: Jeff Replogle

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby yeshuas » Mon May 17, 2010 11:00 pm

Sorry, like NT50 said I missed the fact that you had the 100MB partition, follow his instructions and get back with us
Game Over!!!!!!!!
Image
ASUS Maximus V Gene MB
Windows 8 X64; Windows 7 X64; Windows 7 X86
Intel I5-3570K
16GB Corsair Vengeance Ram
eVGA GeForce GTX 550 TI
Corsair GS700 PS
1TB Seagate SATA 6.0Gb HD
Thermaltake Case
Software Development
User avatar
Posts: 5075
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:29 pm
Location: Chicago, IL
Real Name: Daniel Schmidt

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby anttix » Tue May 18, 2010 6:21 pm

I think our posts crossed NT50, however thanks for your input.

So, I did as you suggested. When doing the repair function using my win7 disc it twice came back with 'no errors found'

Just as a test I selected winXP from the boot menu and again it said that ntldr was either missing or corrupt.

Should the 3 files also be in my winXP root drive? Just guessing really....
PRO New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 7:52 pm

Re: Win7/XP not dual booting

Postby NT50 » Tue May 18, 2010 6:55 pm

They can it will not hurt anything as long as they are the same.
I'm at work now and can not see images so I can not tell what your boot.ini should be.

What ever drive letter Win7 see as XP then that should be the entry for XP.
Delete the entry for XP under DualBootPro and add it manually pointing to the drive letter that Win7 says it is.
If you come up with an hal.dll error or ntldr error then somethign is wrong with the boot.ini. If may be confusing due to the fact of the RAID. You may try changing the boot.ini to different rdisk(#s) due to fact BIOS may be seeign the rdisk as a different # than what Windows is reporting due to the RAID.
Dogs Have Owners; Cats Have Staff
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 8220
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Jackson, TN USA
Real Name: Jeff Replogle

Next

Return to Windows Boot Problems

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron
cron