Windows 7 Dual boot hell

mrobjo

Senior Member
Hi all,i patitioned my hard drive on pc running xp,then installed windows 7 on partition.
windows 7 installed ok and was running ok,but when i tried to boot back into xp i had a screen appear saying hal.dll missing,to cut a long story short,I ended up re installing xp.
now i have a partition with windows seven on it that i cannot boot into.
Would be gratefull on advice on what to do with windows seven partition,how do i remove windows seven from partition.
Is there a way of restoring boot option to boot into windows seven and xp,I just want to keep xp safe this time,thanks.
 
Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums.. :)

If you want to delete Windows 7 from your comp than all you'd do is boot into Windows XP than format the partition that has Windows 7 on it, thus removing it.. ;) OR if you want to keep your dual boot setup I'd suggest downloading EasyBCD.. It's a very easy to use app that allows you to customize/recover the boot manager.. :) It's available here:

Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies
 
Thanks for the reply,cuold you please give some instructions on what have to once i have downloaded it,i just dont want to mess up xp again,i would like to still be able to dual boot,if possible thanks.
 
ok will have a read and decide what to do,my plan is to dual boot if possible,thanks again for the help.
 
No. It is an old message that needs updating. It works perfectly in , except for the rewriting of the boot manager in the last section. When you start to use it, a little judgement will quickly allow you to sort out "7" when , and if, the program says Vista.
here is an example using Mac. You should substitute Vista in the "Type" drop down menu and name it as you wish.

mafkld.jpg


first step -> open EasyBCD and choose Add/remove entries
choose the Mac entry and make sure the type is set to Generic X86 PC

akkhdt.jpg


second step -> go to the Change Settings tab and choose from the second list (as shown in the picture) the Mac OS X boot record
here you can set the wanted name but make sure that you select the drive named "BOOT" from the list. when done click save settings and then go back to the View Settings tab

if you did everything like I mentioned to do the settings tab should look similar to this picture:
mcgqw1.jpg


now restart and check if you should find you have your dual boot.
 
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In addition to the other posts advising using Easybcd:

To use Easybcd in XP, first install .NET framework 2.0

Download details: .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)

If you installed XP after 7, here is how to reinstall Vista / Win7 boot files ( they are the same ) and regain the dual boot option.

Recovering the Vista Bootloader with EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

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Thanks for all the help,will try this out at the weekend,when i have more spare time,im sure i will sort it out,worst thing is to have to re install xp,which i have kept minimal,since i recently re installed.so should only take a couple of hours,but hopefully all will go well,thanks again,will update post to let you know how it went.thanks
 
boot.ini dual boot windows 7 and winxp

I have Win7 in partion 1 (active) and Winxp in Partion 2 (Primary). After install win7, winxp can not boot with error msg some thing like this <Winnt_root> \System32\Hal.dll missing....

The only thing I did was boot with windows 7, then modify the boot.ini as below:
Here is my boot.ini file that works.
*********************
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

******************

Note:
Everything was working fine then I upgraded Windows 7 RC build 7100 to 7201 the boot.ini disappeared, I nolonger can boot winxp; luckyly, I had a copy of boot.ini file (copy of boot.ini), so I just copied that file to C:\boot.ini

When boot from Windows 7. Everything ok I can do dual boot by default it will boot from Windows 7, but you can select to boot from Windows XP.

Good luck.
 
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Windows 7 has been deleted and partition gone,and have all the space on my hd back,and winsows xp running fine.
Am going to get another hard drive and install windows 7 on that.
Thanks to everyone for all the help and advice,could not have sorted it with out you,thanks again:razz:
 
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