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Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

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Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

Postby EFSEAR » Thu Jun 03, 2010 2:31 am

Hello there. I used Vistabootpro with my old computer for years with no problems once I got it setup. Now I have bought a new computer which came with Win7 pre-installed. I wanted a similar system but with Win7 + XP Home. Thought I could do it without downloading a program like bootpro and just selecting it at boot, as my MB allows you select boot settings without going into BIOS, but now I think getting Dualbootpro is probably the best way to go. I have asked on other forums so the rest of this post is copy and pasted.

Anyway I formatted and installed a second HD which went ok, it showed up in explorer np when I checked to make sure it showed up. Win7 was on C naturally, second hd was E. My intention was to install XP Home on it for older games and applications.

At the start of installing XP it asked me where I would like to install it, I choose E: XP Volume which is what I named it so I could pick it out and there could be no mistake. I didn't think much of it at the time, but next to my original HD with Win7 on it there was a selectable field, something called system reserved or something like that. I shrugged and went further down and selected E: XP Volume.

Installation went fine. But the problem is this, I now cannot boot up my original Win7 HD. Weirdly in XP it says that C is system reserved, E is the Xp HD and for reasons only known to God, my Win7 HD is now I. All the stuff which was on it is still there, as I thought I made a mistake with choosing the location for installation.

If I take out the SATA wire from the motherboard from the XP HD I still cannot boot up my Win7 HD, it says there's an error with the boot path.

I don't understand where that system reserved came from, I thought it was supposed to remain hidden and not be assigned a drive letter.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Thanks in advance.
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Re: Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

Postby shreader » Thu Jun 03, 2010 2:47 pm

If you have the Win7 DVD you could restart your PC w/ the DVD in the drive & do a "Startup Repair" to get back into Win7. Hopefully XP will fall inline (& show-up on the boot menu) after doing this & you wont have to edit the xp boot.ini.

XP shows a drive letter for the Win7 reserved folder, strange, that should be hidden.
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Re: Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

Postby EFSEAR » Thu Jun 03, 2010 3:41 pm

Yeah the reserved folder was selectable under the Win7 HD when I was choosing where to install XP. I heard it was supposed to be hidden.

Anyway I'll try repairing the installation from the CD see how it goes.

Just another quick hypothetical question, if I was to reformat and install XP on the second drive again without the HD with Win7 on it plugged in would that throw up any problems?
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Re: Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

Postby NT50 » Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:00 pm

do you have a hidden 100 meg partition in your disk management?

Unpluggint XP drive and startup repair should fix Win 7 problem. May have to run startup repair two time tho (don't ask why, i don't know why).

This should get yoru Win 7 back in order. You can then plug your XP drive back in and make sure the boot order is set to boot from the Win 7 drive. If your system has the 100 meg hidden partition, you will have to assign a drive letter to that partition. Copy the files boot.ini, ntldr, and NTDETECT to the root fo the now unhidden partition. You may have to edit your boot.ini to sow the correct rdisk and partition for XP. Use DualBootPro to add yoru XP entry and it should work.

If yoru system does not have the hidden 100 meg partition, then the necessary boot files should be on the root of the Win 7 drive/partition and it shoudl be labeled system in the Disk Management. If this is the case the copy the three file to the root of this drive partition. Once again you may have to edit yoru boot.ini and add the entry in DualBootPro
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Re: Questions regarding dual booting Win7 + XP

Postby EFSEAR » Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:01 pm

In XP no it's not hidden, clear as day in explorer. It's on C for some strange reason. The Win7 HD which should be on C is on I.

Unfortunately I can't reassign drive letters for it, something about it contains important boot files, or something imortant and cannot be changed.

Anyway I won't be able to sort this for a while because I'm going on holiday...er, vacation for a while so I won't have the time to devote to it for now.

Thanks for the replies :yesnod:

Oh here is a quick screeny in comp management:

Image
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