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Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby yeshuas » Sun Apr 17, 2011 1:56 pm

do you have a partition that is about 100 MB that doesn't have a drive letter assigned, you may or may not have one because of the order you installed the OS's.

In an earlier post I asked where certain files and the Boot Folder was, you said boot file did you mean Boot Folder?
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:26 pm

I meant boot files. I checked for the boot folder:
Boot folder present in Visat; BCD is dated 4/16/11- 44KB
Boot folder present in XP; no BCD present
Boot folder present in Win7; BCD 4/16/11- 32KB

I seem to remember there being a small partition, perhaps 100MB. It doesn't show up in disk management or explorer. I may have seen it in Acronis disk manager. I do recall trying to combine it with an existing partition to incorporate the space. If you wish I can boot using Acronis to see if it dectects it. The triple boot option was available after combining the small partition.

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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby yeshuas » Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:45 pm

if you have the 100 mb partition you should be able to see it in Disk Management but not in windows explorerer, do not try to combine it with another partition, that is where the Folder Boot is located.

You said you tried to combine it, what happened and was that around the time your system started acting up?
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:47 pm

Now you really have me thinking. I remember seeing it. Currently, it is not present in disk manager.

I found contained in the partion after win7 on DISK 1 (G:\) a directory named Merged Volume 'Local Volume'. Windows 7 was installed on 7/2/10. The creation date on this volume is 6/30/10. It is a read only with 0 files and 0 bytes. On 6/29/10 I installed a new Hitachi 500GB drive prior to the win 7 install on it. So it seems that this "missing partition" may be connected to the current difficulties. However, I believe things were running ok after this merger for some time.

I doubt if it's this easy, but what if I shrink partition G: by 200MB, do not assign it to another partition, copy the boot folder to it and run win7 recovery repair?
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby yeshuas » Sun Apr 17, 2011 5:41 pm

I don't have any idea if what you suggest will work with the changing the volume etc, I have never run into this situation, but hang on I will see if I can direct this to one of the Forum programmers.

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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun Apr 17, 2011 7:12 pm

will wait to hear. I am asuming you have to have this separte partition for win7 to work. My quick look around the web indicates that if you have already partitioned all of the drive's space prior to install, this small partition is not created. And there is a boot folder in the win7 root directory. Perhaps not having this small space prohibits using a recovery repair option, Which initially worked for me.
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby yeshuas » Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:06 pm

Like I said earlier, you may not have had the 100MB partition, since you already had XP and Vista installed, (providing you didn't unplug any drive and I think you said you didn't) so you may not have had one, but the recovery console problem may have messed up MBR or something else.

Here is a suggestion from one of the other Managers

Since you can get into Vista, you could do a Restore of the BCD w/ his VBP 3.1 & see what happens
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:44 pm

I'll do a vbp restore. I have the capacity to do a restore of the MBR using an Acronis image of it taken prior to disaster. But I will try your way first.I did a MBR restore for xp but all that got me was it appeared on the os listed in VBP, and the starting splash screen showed briefly for xp. I have yet to do this with win7. The logistics here is I need the pc for real work related stuff and I don't want to completely trash the machine. Thanks again for your assistance.
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby hawkdriver » Thu Apr 21, 2011 3:24 am

I have been researching my issue in microsoft land and other sites. I want to be sure my BCD as reported by vbp 1 is correct before I do anything else.
It indicates that Bootmagr is c:\
vista is c:
windows 7 is on F:
xp is on d:
These locations coincide with disk management info. (in terms of where the os resides)

All these os's are available on the boot up screen, but only Visat completes the boot process. The other two os's show the spash screen for loading, but fail to finish.

I have pre-disaster backups for all three os's , including the option of just restoring the MBR.

Which os would be best to attempt a restore first? My guess is win7 because it was last installed and wrote to the BCD.
Next question would be whether to try a disk restore and/or a MBR restore?

I have backed up the current os's to external hard drive, so I have a way to get back to one out of three os's working. hopefully

What confuses me is that all three os's show up on the initial boot screen, but only one os will complete the boot process.

The one error message using win7 recovery repair that external media is in use suggests that in my frenzy to find a way to recover, I hung the notebook's drive on another pc and it may have written that an operating system was going to external media and I know you can't install a windows os on external media.

Any new thoughts about this issue.
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Re: Tripple Boot turns into One Boot

Postby jbullard » Thu Apr 21, 2011 11:28 am

I have tried to look at every thread but I may have missed something. If you have tried to do this then disregard and we'll keep looking for a solution. Go ahead and boot to your Windows 7 DVD. When you get to the Windows 7 Install screen, on the bottom left you will see 'Repair your Computer'. Click on that and you should be taken to the System Recovery Options screen. Click on the link for Command Prompt and type bootrec /fixboot. Once finished reboot and see if this solves the problem.
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