Windows 7 Dual boot woahs & Hard Drive not detected

Goosey

New Member
Hello all,

I have 3 physical drives (lets call them A/B/C, not drive letters just a name). Windows XP is installed on A. C is split into two partitions, one of which Windows 7 Beta is installed to.

Now that Windows 7 is running I do not get the expected 'Pick which windows' boot screen. I also am not seeing B in the 'my Computer' of Windows 7 (I do see all other partitions). Oddly the Device Manager sees that B is in the system.

Anyone having similar issues or any advice? I really would like to fix both these problems.. :)

EDIT: Found the answer to the missing drive in this thread: http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-support/554-hard-drive-detection.html

I still am not sure about the dual boot problems

EDIT2: Using the Administrative Tools Disk manager to manage my partitions I resized my partition on A (that holds Windows XP) and added another NTFS partition there. I then re-installed Windows 7 to this second partition on A. Then I destroyed the partition on C that held my old Windows 7 Beta install and re-grew the other partition on C. Sorry if I am being needlessly confusing here, the current setup is:
- A with 2 partitions, one with Windows XP install, the other with Windows 7 Beta install
- B with 1 partition
- C with 1 partition

I had always intented to put Windows 7 on A, but the partitioner I was using (a GParted boot CD) had errors doing this so I settled with putting it on a partition on C originally. Now it is back on the same partition as Windows XP, but unfortunately this did not provide the boot menu as I had hoped for.

So I am still not able to dual boot into Windows XP. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks :)

EDIT EDIT:
Third times a charm I guess! My computer randomly started having booting troubles... It was freezing during the POST (Yikes!). Finally the BIOS booted in 'safe mode' and recommended I reset my BIOS settings. I had overclocked my CPU and changed RAM timings and voltages... My PC has been running with these changes, but somehow Windows 7 or the new(er) driver model has made the system a bit more sensitive to the hardware clocking? Who knows..

Anyway, I reset these and the system boots into XP. I device to format the Windows7 partition and reinstall it again, and now Windows 7 is displaying the Dual boot menu as it should and detecting all drives.

Funny how sometimes near-death can result in exactly what you want..
 
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