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[mewnliter Profile]

I have a second computer that originally had Windows 98 on C drive and XP on D drive. C and D are the the first two partitions on a drive with four partitions. Then a couple years later I installed Vista on C drive in place of 98. If I remember right, I used VistaBoot Pro to regain access to my XP partition. A couple of days ago I reformatted C drive and installed Windows 7 on it. Now I can't access XP again. I had anticipated this but expected VistaBoot Pro would fix it again. So I installed it (version 3.3) in Windows 7 and so far no success. The boot menu is there but when I pick XP it just reboots the computer. I have copied the original boot.ini, NTDetect.com, and ntldr to the root of C and they are also in the root of D. boot.ini is pointing to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS which if I'm right is the second partition on the first hard drive which is correct. My primary machine which I'm using right now to post this is set up exactly the same way. I replaced Vista with Windows 7 on this one last winter. This is what I have entered on BOTH machines (except the ID of course):
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {678a1961-d79b-11de-9398-dd19a6bc3d85}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: XP Professional
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Boot Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \ntldr

Note that the Boot Drive is C: for both OS's. The Windows Drive (which would be D:) or the Windows Directory does not appear to be an option in the XP entry. But it works on this machine just fine. I did try changing the boot drive to D on the other one but it had the same results. One menu that confuses me is System Bootloader Maintenance. Do I want the Vista Bootloader or the legacy bootloader? Do I want it on the System Partition, All drives, or just one drive?

I do have both partitions imaged and I'm sure if I restored the C partition (with Vista on it) that it would work. But that would just put me back to square one. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

[mewnliter Profile]

I have a screen shot of my boot management window on the machine in question at http://mewnlite.com/partitions.jpg . I do NOT remember seeing that small "System Reserved" partition before. The computer I'm on here only has the C thru G partitions with no partition wedged in front of it. Could that be part of the problem? After noting that, I changed the boot.ini to point to partition 3 but that didn't do it. I also just threw away $9.95 on "DualBootPro" which turns out to be the same thing as VistaBootPro as far as I can see. I don't mind donating money to the cause, but I was at least hoping for something more promising!

[Grav!ty Profile]

The boot system files of ALL your operating systems need to be on the drive tagged (System) as per your disk management screenshot. They are ntldr, boot.ini and NTDETECT.COM for XP and the file bootmgr and folder Boot (plus contents) for Vista and Windows 7.

You will need to add a drive letter to the (System) partition so that it is visible to XP.

Once you've done that, reinstall the Windows 7 bootloader>All Drives using the System Bootloader page of DualBootPRO and lets see how you go from there.

[mewnliter Profile]

I did as you said. I gave it a drive letter (X) and copied the three necessary XP files to that drive as well. I tried assigning X as the boot drive for XP in DualBoot Pro. I left C as the boot drive for Windows 7. XP wouldn't boot so I changed the boot drive back to C. It still didn't work. So I went for a reinstall of Windows 7. I deleted the System Reserved partition and the C partition which turned both into one area of "unallocated space". Then I installed Windows 7 in that unallocated space. And lo and behold, when I got it installed, that "System Reserved" partition came back again! Where is that coming from? As you can see at http://mewnlite.com/dualboot.gif my main computer has no such partition. And I installed Windows 7 the same exact way on that one. I had no problem using VistaBootPro getting that one to dual boot.
I have not installed DualBootPro or VistaBoot Pro on it yet to try again. I'm awaiting someone's blow by blow description on how to get it right this time,
I have visited a couple of my friends' places and looked at their WIndows 7 machines. Neither of those have that "System Reserved" partition. Where is it coming from?

[Grav!ty Profile]

Check out these guides for some ideas mewnliter. None of them are exactly what your situation is but you should get enough information from them to understand what you are dealing with. Feel free to ask any specific questions along the way:

reformatted-and-reinstalled-xp-lost-boot-to-windows-7-t114759.html

dual-boot-trouble-shooting-guide-xp-windows-7-running-t112569.html

install-windows-xp-in-dual-boot-with-pre-installed-windows-7-t112568.html

[mewnliter Profile]

OK. Thank you very much. One of the links you sent me to showed me how to eliminate that extra partition. Basically I slaved the drive and then used disk management to delete both that partition and the existing C partition. Then I formed a new volume out of all the unpartitioned space and then formatted it and assigned C for a drive letter. Then I hooked the drive back up, booted from the Windows 7 installation DVD and picked that partition. Windows 7 installed fine and the System Reserved partition was not there. Then I copied my three XP files to the root of C, installed DualBoot Pro and had no problem adding XP. And it worked.
Thanks again. You can call this one "closed".

[Grav!ty Profile]

Well done mewnliter