A Digital Age Deserves A Digital Leader

Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

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.

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:42 pm

I used pc last night (vista). shut down, and this a.m. saw bands of verticle lines across the screen. I was unable to boot into visat or any other os. Did as you instructed above and nothing changed. When booting fron the win7 disk, the lines do not appear. I was given the option to repair either win7 or vista (xp doesn't appear as an option). I tried a recovery repair of windows 7. It indicated it could not perform this task. Upon rebooting the error message is now page_ fault_in_nonpaged_area.
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby jbullard » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:49 pm

Sounds like you also have some hardware issues going on. How old is this laptop? Have you tried doing the bootrec /fixboot and choosing Vista instead of 7? Also, at any point have you used your Acronis recovery disks for any of the operating systems?
VP - Software
User avatar
Posts: 3653
Joined: Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:17 pm
Location: Utah
Real Name: Jason Bullard

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:50 pm

I tried the bootrec and that did not help. At the momment I am doing an acronis restore of vista, and then I will do a win7 acronis restore. If that fails I will do the acronis restores for mbr for both os. At this rate I fell I am running out of "simple" solutions.
The hp laptop is about 4 years old.
those verticle bands do not appear at all when I boot from acronis disk or win7 dvd disk.

My questions are simple; On disk 0(vista, win7, local drive)
on disk 1 (xp, local, local )
which partitions should show as actve, which as system, which as boot? And which os or mbr has overall control of the boot process? Does each partition with an os have a mbr?
I am in a position now to do a backup of the mbr for an os. The question is which one. When I try to boot I get the message that ntldr is missing ( I have placed it in every os's root directry) I also was able to determine that the boot folder in windows 7 is not in the root directory, rather, it is in the windows directory. Is this correct?
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun May 08, 2011 3:03 am

Laptop returned from repair. Only problem was defective dvd drive. Using a spare hard drive, they installed my windows 7 dvd, and the computer works fine. I reinstalled the two hard drives in the machine and unable to boot to any os. I noticed, using an aronis boot disk, that the windows 7 partition, the last os installed, does not indicate system, and that the first partition on the drive which is vista, is marked as active. Using the win 7 dvd, in recovery repair mode, I also discovered that xp is not detected. I have thought to reinstall windows 7 in the partition where it currently resides, and maybe this would bring the other two os's into the boot loader and become available. I am determined to find a way out of this problem. Any thoughts? Thanks. hawkdriver
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sat May 14, 2011 11:34 pm

Hello, anyone minding the store? I've been away too. Do you think a reinstall of windows7, the last os to go on the machine would pull the other two os's into the boot loading? It seems to be worth a try.
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby Grav!ty » Sun May 15, 2011 12:07 am

Give that a try and if it doesn't work, then please post a screenshot of your Disk Management and we'll take it from there.
Image

"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." - Niccolo Machiavelli
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 15790
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:22 am
Real Name: Graham

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun May 15, 2011 1:21 am

At the momment I cannot boot into any os on the laptop. Using acronis disk management I can see that the Vista os (disk, o, first partition) is marked as active, boot, and system, while Windows7, the last os installed, is marked as boot, healthy, (on disk 0, second partition). I would be willing to trash win7 to get the other two os's back. There's less installed there. My first posting of the windows disk management screen shows windows 7 as system. So clearly, this is where the problem is. Is there any other way to make windows 7 partition the system drive? Thanks for the support; hawkdriver
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby Grav!ty » Sun May 15, 2011 2:09 am

Try changing the HDD boot drive priority in the BIOS. That should give you the ability to boot into Vista and then you should be able to format the Windows 7 drive in preparation for a fresh install of it.

By the way, third party partitioning software like Acronis does not play nice with either Vista or Windows 7, so it is recommended that you use the built-in Windows software for that.
Image

"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." - Niccolo Machiavelli
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 15790
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:22 am
Real Name: Graham

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun May 15, 2011 7:43 pm

Win 7 install went ok. although it is an oem edition. Startup choices show visat and xp, but unable to start either. Disk management screen indicates disk 0 first partition d: has system, active, primatry
second partition c: shows boot, page file, crash dump
disk 1 first partion shows xp active, primary. I ran vbp 3.1 and it indicated two partitions as d:
corrected this but still unable to boot to xp or vista. Am I wasting my and your time, or is there a way to fix things. I dread the option of reinstalling two or three operating systems, (of course in the xp, vista , win7 order), and then the programs. The good news is there appears to be nothing wrong with the laptop, and I'm not in a part of the country (yet) dealing with bibical disasters. Please adivse.
PRO Level 3
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:34 pm

Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby Grav!ty » Sun May 15, 2011 8:03 pm

There really is no rocket science involved in this stuff, it's all very basic.

The boot system files for all operating systems must be on the root of the drive labelled (System) as per Disk Management. For Vista and Win 7 the items are the file bootmgr and the folder Boot (plus contents) and for XP they are boot.ini, ntldr and NTDETECT.COM. There should only be one instance of the items I mention as both Vista and Win 7 will share the boot system files.

Once these are where they should be, it's really a matter of configuring your BCD.

If you post a screen shot of your Disk Management we can probably help you to do that using VBP.
Image

"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." - Niccolo Machiavelli
PROfessional Member
User avatar
Posts: 15790
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:22 am
Real Name: Graham

PreviousNext

Return to Windows Boot Problems

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron
cron