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Reformatted and Reinstalled XP: Lost Boot to Windows 7

Reformatted and Reinstalled XP: Lost Boot to Windows 7

Postby Grav!ty » Tue Jun 22, 2010 1:44 am

Reformatted and Reinstalled XP: Lost Boot to Windows 7


So you’ve reformatted your Windows XP drive/partition and reinstalled Windows XP and now you can’t boot into Windows 7? The reason is the files that Windows 7 needs to be able to boot have been removed in the process.


Both Windows XP and Windows 7 place these files on the System drive of the computer they are installed on. For Windows Seven they are:

A. The folder Boot which contains the BCD (Boot Configuration Data) store and fulfills the same function as the boot.ini file does for Windows XP. On startup, it points the system to:

B. The file bootmgr which in Windows 7 replaces the Windows XP file ntldr.


To recover the ability to boot into Windows 7, you need to:

1. Insert your Windows 7 DVD and boot to DVD, as if you are going to run Windows 7 setup.

2. After selecting your Language, Time and currency settings, click Next and at the “Install now” screen select “Repair your computer”.

3. System Recovery Options will appear and start searching for Windows 7 installations. Then a dialog box will come up telling you that problems with the startup options were found. Select “Repair and restart”

4. All that startup repair has done so far is to place the folder Boot on the system drive and you will boot back into Windows XP. Now you need to let Startup Repair rebuild the BCD store.

5. Boot to the Windows 7 DVD again and repeat the process as in Point 2 above. System Recovery Options will again appear and start searching. This time your Windows 7 installation/s will be shown. Select your Windows 7 installation (or the first listed installation if you have more than one Windows 7 installation on your system) and click Next. At the next dialog box select “Startup Repair” and when that is done, select “Finish” at the next screen to restart your system.

6. You will now boot directly into Windows 7 and the option to boot into Windows XP will now temporarily have been lost. If you only had one Windows 7 installation on your system you will not see the boot menu at this stage. Startup repair will now have copied the file bootmgr to your system drive and rebuilt your BCD.

7. Download and install DualBootPRO if you don’t already have it installed on your Windows 7 installation. Do not at this stage backup your BCD as it is not yet complete.

Open DualBootPRO and go to the Boot Information tab and select “Detailed”. Note the drive letter on which the file bootmgr was placed. It will be shown in the very first entry listed, with the identifier {bootmgr}.

Now go to the Operating Systems tab in DualBootPRO and select “Add New OS Entry” and select “Windows Legacy”, give the entry a name such as Windows XP and select the drive letter you noted from the drop down menu and press Apply Updates.

If the new entry you created comes up with black text you know for sure your drive selection was correct and you are home and dry.

You can select the Windows XP entry and make it the default entry if you choose to, and move it to the top of the Windows 7 boot menu.

8. Reboot and select the Windows XP entry which you created to boot into Windows XP. You can use DualBootPRO to rename the boot menu items as you choose and to get rid of the (recovered) tag.
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