Windows 7 Another Dual boot Problem

ddiirrkk

New Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2009
I have 2 250gig hard drives in my system. I have xp pro installed on one(partitioned and first is primary and active drive(0)) and Installed Windows 7 on the second drive. After windows 7 is the only os choice on boot. I can use the bios boot option at startup and boot into xp so I know the boot sector is fine. I have install easybcd 1.72 and tried to manually add xp to the boot options but when I try to boot to xp the system just restarts and boots back to the same os choice screen. I've been trying most of the day to get this to work. If I select a different drive for xp in the options I get the /ntldr error(I know it's the wrong choice) Anyone else have a similar problem?
 
go to google and type in "grub boot loader" it's put out by GNU, and is well maintained, and has good user forums on it :)
 
Thanks I'll check it out and let you know

Still no joy. The problem may be that through a series of issues in the past my xp partition ended up being dirve e: instead of the usual c:. I really had no issue with it so I let it go and have been using it like that for 5 years now worry free. What I don notice is that xp lists it's partition on hard drive 0 and the windows 7 partition on hard dive 1. When I boot into windows 7 and look at disk management it lists its own partition as hard drive 0 and xp's partition as hard drive 1. What happens now is that I am given the option on boot to go to windows 7 or xp pro, but if I select xp pro it say's it can't boot because hal.dll is invalid or corupt. If I choose the bios boot option and boot from the xp disk all is good so I know the hardware abstact layer is fine (hal.dll) I think the problem is in the boot.ini listing the xp partition on disk(0). I have 2 sata hard drives and from what I've read so far I think this may be a unique situation. I could put both os's on one drive to solve the problem(works I tried it). I just would like to know if it may be possible to work around this problem. I'm still working at it.

:razz:Got it working with grub, and much reading to understand the map part of the boot and the proper way to select my xp partition. The --find--root wouldn't work for me. Thanks for the grub direction.
 
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I just installed Win 7 Beta 7000 on a MSI GX630 notebook that already had Windows XP SP3 and UBUNTU. (I abandoned VISTA after discovering there was no simple way to make a Windows image backup without laying out $$$$$$ to upgrade from VISTA HOME OEM to ULTIMATE.)
The Win 7 boot menu displays a list:
EARLIER VERSION OF WINDOWS
WINDOWS 7
UBUNTU
All three OS boot up normally without interaction.
My theory on why this works is because I used the notebook eSATA port to install to an external SATA hard drive. (Actually an old 40 GB Barracuda with a $10 SATA-IDE adapter.) External HDs on a USB port are not supported for installation.
I also use that port to do image backups to another old Barracuda.
I need to do more testing but I think Win 7 does not like to share the first hard drive with another OS.
Now, if I can figure out how to downgrade the USB floppy driver to XP's sfloppy.sys. The Win 7 sfloppy.sys does not work.
 
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