Windows 7 Dual boot Server 2008 R2/Win 7 issue

[Camride]

Quick rundown of what happened:

My desktop has 2 hard drives, 1TB and 320GB. I have Win 7 installed on the TB drive, and I use the 320GB drive for testing. I previously had a full installation of Server 2008 Enterprise on the 320GB drive. Yesterday I went and installed Server 2008 R2 on the 320GB drive. Now the Win 7 drive won't boot.

Now this is what happens, if I have both drives plugged in Server 2008 R2 (Core installation, so there's no gui just a command prompt) boots up with no options (straight into the OS, doesn't give me any choices like it used to), doesn't matter which drive I list as first boot. If I unplug the 320GB drive I get no boot at all. I ran the Win 7 disc and when I get to the repair screen it doesn't show an OS in the window to repair. I can get to a command prompt and see that everything is there, but it won't boot. I tried running the Startup Repair and oddly enough it says it found a boot partition error and that it fixed it, but it still won't boot.

Any idea's? I haven't had to deal with Win 7 boot issues before (I'm used to just fixing the boot.ini). When I had previously installed Server 2008 a few months ago it just modified to boot options to show me both Operating Systems and I could just choose. Not sure why 2008 R2 pooched the Win 7 startup.

I'm really trying to keep both of these OSs intact if I can. I did a couple hours worth of configuration and testing on the 2008 R2 server that I'd prefer not to lose. I also really don't want to reinstall 7 as I only backup my files and I don't want to have to reinstall all my programs again (just finally installed the full version a couple weeks ago when the beta expired). This might make me start looking at doing an image based backup...

 

[busydog]

Quick rundown of what happened:

My desktop has 2 hard drives, 1TB and 320GB. I have Win 7 installed on the TB drive, and I use the 320GB drive for testing. I previously had a full installation of Server 2008 Enterprise on the 320GB drive. Yesterday I went and installed Server 2008 R2 on the 320GB drive. Now the Win 7 drive won't boot.

Now this is what happens, if I have both drives plugged in Server 2008 R2 (Core installation, so there's no gui just a command prompt) boots up with no options (straight into the OS, doesn't give me any choices like it used to), doesn't matter which drive I list as first boot. If I unplug the 320GB drive I get no boot at all. I ran the Win 7 disc and when I get to the repair screen it doesn't show an OS in the window to repair. I can get to a command prompt and see that everything is there, but it won't boot. I tried running the Startup Repair and oddly enough it says it found a boot partition error and that it fixed it, but it still won't boot.

Any idea's? I haven't had to deal with Win 7 boot issues before (I'm used to just fixing the boot.ini). When I had previously installed Server 2008 a few months ago it just modified to boot options to show me both Operating Systems and I could just choose. Not sure why 2008 R2 pooched the Win 7 startup.

I'm really trying to keep both of these OSs intact if I can. I did a couple hours worth of configuration and testing on the 2008 R2 server that I'd prefer not to lose. I also really don't want to reinstall 7 as I only backup my files and I don't want to have to reinstall all my programs again (just finally installed the full version a couple weeks ago when the beta expired). This might make me start looking at doing an image based backup...

Try BootItNG.... it has let me boot all sorts of combination's of hard drives and operating systems.

Boot Manager, Partition Manager, and Drive Image Utility - BootIt Next Generation

 

[cybercore]

boots up with no options (straight into the OS, doesn't give me any choices like it used to), doesn't matter which drive I list as first boot. If I unplug the 320GB drive I get no boot at all.

Did you try (both in Server and in 7) Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and repair options > Check the option to display os boot entries ?

 

[Camride]

Did you try (both in Server and in 7) Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and repair options > Check the option to display os boot entries ?

Windows 7 couldn't boot at all and Server 2008 R2 is a Core installation (no gui, just command line) so I couldn't check that.

I did get it working, but I honestly don't know how. I went in through the WIn 7 install disc and ran through the repair options. At the first screen it wouldn't show an OS at all, but when I did the startup repair it showed a boot partition error. It said it fixed it, but even after running it at least 5-6 times it still wouldn't boot. I was then trying to figure out what happened by using bcdedit, but the Win 7 HD showed no BCD store at all. I went through these instructions to fix it: Boot Trouble - The NeoSmart Forums but couldn't get it to create a bcd store. After running through the startup repair a few more times I ended up giving up, as there's no way to boot Windows with no bcd store. So I used xcopy to copy the few files I know hadn't been backed up recently, ran the startup repair one more time (it gave me the same results as every other time) and rebooted. I was pretty much ready to install Windows again and it just booted up like nothing had happened. I have no idea why the startup repair worked on probably the 11th or 12th time, but it finally worked.

At least it's working now, but I seriously have no idea how. I haven't checked my Server 2008 R2 installation yet to see if it's working. At least if that one is dead it'll be easier to redo than my desktop would be.