[HamishM]

Hi,

I have a dual-boot DELL system, which has Windows 7 and Vista installed.

The Vista is an old installation, and boots from the primary disk (Disk #0). Windows 7 boots from disk #1.

I have installed a clean Vista onto disk #2, however, to get it working it temporarily had to be located as Disk#0.

The new install booted fine, and allowed me to boot to Windows 7, however it failed to allow me to the Old Vista which was disk #3 at this stage, despite the fact that DualBoot pro seemed to see the OS and recognise it. The boot error was c:\windows\winload.exe not found or corrupt.

When I moved the disks back to the original setup - the old vista worked, and Windows 7, but not the new vista.

Can someone help explain what might be happening?

I am intending to migrate across to the new vista, however need to be able to quickly shift between them.

DualBoot pro is installed on all setups.

Many thanks, Hamish.

[yeshuas]

Was or is Disk 2 another physical disk, or a existing partition of one of the disks that was already in the computer?

[HamishM]

Hi there,

There are 4 physical disks in the system, on IDs 0 thru 3.

As it is a Dell system, to rebuild a clean installation, the "refreshed" disk had to be located at ID#0.

However, DualBootpro seemed to reconise this installation, and tracked the drive-label when it changed.

Disk 0: when booted into my 'old' vista is DriveC
Disk 1: is data (Drive D)
Disk 2: is windows 7 (which boots fine) (Drive I)
Disk 3: is 'clean vista' (Drive X)

DualBootPro sees the OS on the correct disk label.

When I boot to Win 7, Drive I is 'old vista' and Drive X is 'clean vista'

However, the only way I can get to boot to the clean vista is by physically moving disk-3 to disk-0s position.

This would suggest that the boot record (I think) is not correct, and if I could somehow edit this, I could see the three OS which are all bootable and working - no?

Thanks for your question....


-h

[JabbaPapa]

This should be easy to fix -- go either into the Vista that works or the W7, and use the DualBootPRO that you have installed there.

Look at the drive letter provided by Windows Explorer for the drive containing the new Vista set-up -- use the Manage OS entries tab and check the Add New OS entry box (I'm using VistaBootPRO and the precise names of these elements may have changed in DBP) -- provide the name that you want, use the drive letter provided by Explorer in that Windows setup, and select the appropriate Windows version (Vista).

Oh and btw, there is one possible (but rare and unusual) potential issue, due to the nature of the Vista/W7 pre-boot environment -- the pre-boot environment does not always use the same order of drives/partitions that appears in Windows Explorer, so that the drive letter element can sometimes be a little temperamental, and you may need to try creating multiple boot entries using several different drive letters. You could try creating several entries for C:, D:, E:, F:, I:, X:, and see which one works, if the standard procedures fail to help you that is (which is unlikely). You can create several entries named drive C, drive D:, etc -- after you know which one works, you can easily use DBP to remove those that you don't need.

Having said that, I'm not sure what your intentions are for the old Vista setup -- if you are planning on keeping it as a backup, then the above should work ; but if you're planning on deleting it and recovering the hard drive for other purposes, then the better solution may be to simply use your Drive X in the Disc 0 position -- so that your boot environment were completely independent of the old Vista setup (which will not be the case if you retain the old Vista drive in the Disc 0 position).

If you continue to have problems, can you please then explain what your plans are for the old Vista setup, and what your plans are concerning that hard drive ? This will be helpful to let people find the best solution for your boot environment

[HamishM]

Hi folks - thanks for the responses.

I have triwed replicating the DualBootPro entries, by deleting and adding the entries. What I see is that the changes I make seem to be replicated across all disks with dualbootpro.

By this, i mean that if Win7 is put to the top entry, it appears as the top entry even if it was set that way in Win7, and I then boot into Vista, and check DualBootpro.

Only thing I have not checked is trying a variety of letters, however I did try the 'diagnostics' which seemed to indicate things were looking ok - e.g. no red entries.

So, to recap.

Windows7 boots fine.
My original Vista only boots when it is drive 0.
My clean vista only boots when it is drive 0.
When I move my clean vista to Drive X, tell DualBootPro that I have a new OS, then reboot and try using this 'clean' install in Drive1,2 or 3 position, I get the c:\windows\winload.exe error.
When the clean vista is on Drive0, it works, but my 'old vista' now has the C:\windows\winload.exe error.

Bizarre, as I thought that the DualBootpro would handle that for me - unless there are some hardcoded file/drive IDs somewhere in the boot sequence that I cannot see.


Over time I want to migrate onto the new Vista - however, not until all files, apps and email are over, which will take a few weeks. I guess a new install might be needed, which is not ideas, as it'd be another licence activation....

Thanks for your help....

-h

[HamishM]

Oh - all disks are physical disks. 1TB WD, 1TB WD, 1.5TB Seagate, and 2TB WD.

[JabbaPapa]

Only thing I have not checked is trying a variety of letters, however I did try the 'diagnostics' which seemed to indicate things were looking ok - e.g. no red entries.

...

Bizarre, as I thought that the DualBootpro would handle that for me - unless there are some hardcoded file/drive IDs somewhere in the boot sequence that I cannot see.

Some boot data is recorded onto flash memory contained in your hard drive, and is only provided to Windows when it's on the zero Drive/boot Drive BIOS can sometimes interpret that data otherwise than Windows does, thus potentially creating the discrepancy that I have referred to (although this is a very rare occurrence).

Do try the variety of letters trick -- but if that does not work, you will maybe need some expert help from PROnet Staff, who are obviously more familiar with DBP

Oh, and given that your plan is to move everything to the new Vista and discard the old one, I would personally recommend putting the new Vista drive into the drive zero position in your hardware config, and then fixing the boot environment in this new Vista so that it can see the old one -- so that eventually removing the old Vista/formatting the drive/whatever will leave your boot environment intact.

[HamishM]

I did try putting multiple drives in a boot options under DBP, and got an interesting result.

The drives listed as available, were C, D, F, G, H, I, J, M, N, O, Q, S, W, X

When I tried with a few, e.g. I, J, N, O - they all switched back to 'O' in the DBP menu, and I could not change this.

AND when I tried booting, the multiple 'O' drive entries failed - so I will retry with all drives shown as options, however cannot see how else to change the drive letter....... confusing.

Thanks, Hamish.

[yeshuas]

Can you post a image of your Disk Management screen; with Windows 7 being involved it creates a system partition of 100 mg or so and may be influencing this

[HamishM]

Hi there - tried creating a boot line in DBP for each available drive listed as an option under the 'add new OS' - as before, the label kept reverting to one of 5 letters, none of which worked OTHER than the 2 OS drives that currently book OK.

So, attached is a snapshot of MMC Drive Manager......

thanks for your help so far..... !

Disk Mgt snapshot

23-02-2011 10-15-48 a.m..png (106.62 KiB) Viewed 372 times