Windows 7 Dual booting XP & 7; flashed BIOS; 7 ok, XP borked; now won't boot properly:

[davidshea]

I've been dual-booting for about two months now on two seperate HDs. One HD is XP Pro SP3 - it was my first one - and then I added another HD and installed Win 7 on that.

Recently, my 7 was crashing in a BSOD hard when I was playing a video game. I posted the minidump files online, and was told that it was two issues: my video drivers, and hardware. Well, I un/re-installed the video drivers, and did the most dreaded thing imaginable: flashed my BIOS. The positive is, the new BIOS fixed all my "yellow warning signs" in 7's Device Manager, and everything is running fine, and it didn't even flinch.

However, the BIOS flash totally borked my XP drive. I tried to fix it by both Repairing XP on top (that didn't work), and again, using the XP disc, hitting R, going to the Command line, and typing FIXBOOT. Well, that seems to have REALLY screwed things up. Now, when I reboot or boot up, instead of getting the

"Which OS do you want:
Older version of windows
Windows 7"

instead I get "Bad boot record, please insert disc and hit enter."

Now the weird thing is, if I put in the Win 7 disc, hit a hard restart, it reboots and comes up with the "hit any key to launch from CD or DVD..."; but I DON'T; instead, I just leave it, after that, guess what? It comes to the proper dual-boot "Which OS do you want" page. I then choose Windows 7, and it boots totally fine.

So. How can I fix this? I am open to many suggestions, but it's clear that my XP drive is fried, and since I do have the date from it on an external HD (and also on my 7 drive), I aim to wipe that drive anyway and just use it for storage. So how can I fix my current boot problem, AND eventually get me to only booting up my Win 7 HD? Should I use "EasyBCD" like so many other forums suggest? Essentially, I installed 7 in a dual-boot environment, but now the XP is fried, and Win 7 doesn't want to boot up properly.

Please help!

 

[davidshea]

What you did originally was to install Win 7 with the XP drive set as primary. The Win 7 boot files were placed in the XP partition and the XP install was incorporated, as is normally done.

When you reflashed your bios, what probably happened is that you reversed the order of the drives in the bios so the boot files were now inaccurate.

The Diskpart instructions SIW2 is giving you are correct, although if you have access to Disk Management, you do not need to go that route. You can just use Disk Managment to set partitions active. You cannot set them to inactive, however.

You need to get the Win 7 install booting normally and worry about XP later. I would set the Win 7 partition active (which the diskpart instructions do) and then set the drive to first priority in the bios. You can then leave the XP drive in or not.

Now doing a repair install should repair you boot situation. Then use EasyBCD to regain your dual boot menu.

Basically, SIW2 has a great deal of experience in this, do not worry about his instructions.

Dear Saltgrass & SIW2:

First, again, as always - thank you for taking time to help me.

Second - it didn't work; but it did produce a new error message, so - progress? Here's what I did: Saltgrass, I did what you suggested, and I went into Disk Management. I then found my Win 7 drive, highlighted it by clicking on the partition, Right-Clicked, and chose to "Make this partition Active". I also left my XP HDD in, since you said it was ok.

Next, I restarted w/my DVD in, chose "Hit any key" to launch from teh 7 DVD, and chose Repair, and then chose Startup Recovery. But after I chose my 7 drive and asked it to search for repairs, guess what? It came back and said that it found none.

So I then rebooted, w/out my 7 DVD in, and a new error message came up. It read: "BOOTMGR is missing (Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart)" This is different than the "Disk boot failure" message I have been receiving.

So I then restarted two more times from the DVD, each time "Hitting any key", launching from the DVD, choosing Repair, and again both times, clicking on Startup Recovery. Each and every time (three in total) it came back with "No errors found." But I again rebooted w/out the DVD, and again, received the "BOOTMGR is missing" error.

Any thoughts on the next step(s)? And yes, my Win 7 HDD is first in the BIOS boot order. Also, both drives are currently "active", not sure if that's a problem or not. But clearly, my 7 HDD is still somehow locked into a dual-boot scenario, and something is not right. Finally, if you do want me to use EasyBCD for something, please be very specific on what I am to do, because I am very unfamiliar w/that program. Thank you again in advance.

 

[Saltgrass]

If it never found your Win 7 install, it could not fix it. When you boot to the DVD and select Repair then start up repair, then you get a screen with a fix this install or restore from (second choice). Make sure the top option is selected. If you have a Win 7 install, it will find it. If you are still getting a dual boot option, then you are probably still booting to the original drive. Are you sure the Win 7 partition is active?

If I remember correctly, the first time you do a repair, you will get a screen about fixing something. Then it asks to reboot and fixes something else, but it has been a while since I went through the procedure.

Disconnect the XP drive to make sure there are no problems. If you do have the Win 7 partition set to active, the Repair will find it and fix it. In reality, even if the XP drive was primary, if it had an active partition, the repair should have still worked, although it would have still needed the XP drive installed.

If not, go through SIW2's procedure, it is very easy.

Not time for EasyBCD unless you are trying to dual boot, which can be taken care of later if necessary.

When I said "not to worry about SIW2's instructions" I meant you could use them without concern. I hope you did not misunderstand. When I re-read the post, I realized I might have given you the wrong idea.

 

[SIW2]

Lol. I thought you had done it days ago.

Now you need to do this:

If you can't boot in , boot the 7 dvd/repair disc, go to command prompt, type :

Diskpart

(then press enter )

lis vol

(then press enter )

(find the drive letter for your Morgoth partition - it is not necessarily the same letter as you see in windows )

sel vol morgothdriveletter

(then press enter)

inact

(then press enter)

exi

(then press enter )


then run startup repair - it may take 3 runs.

That will get you booting straight into 7 without needing the dvd.

Then you can add XP to the 7 boot menu.

 

[davidshea]

Lol. I thought you had done it days ago.

Now you need to do this:

If you can't boot in , boot the 7 dvd/repair disc, go to command prompt, type :

Diskpart

(then press enter )

lis vol

(then press enter )

(find the drive letter for your Morgoth partition - it is not necessarily the same letter as you see in windows )

sel vol morgothdriveletter

(then press enter)

inact

(then press enter)

exi

(then press enter )


then run startup repair - it may take 3 runs.

That will get you booting straight into 7 without needing the dvd.

Then you can add XP to the 7 boot menu.

Ok, here's what I did, and it still didn't work. Here goes:

I booted straight into 7 using the DVD (not into the Setup/Repair, but straight into the 7 OS, using the MBR on the DVD). Once there, I hit Start, typed "cmd", and Right-Clicked on it (as you said three posts up), and chose "Run as Admin". Then when the cmd box came up, I did the following: Diskpart; the lis vol; then sel vol "d" (which is my Morgoth/XP drive); then inact (which set my XP to Inactive state, and yes, my 7 is set as Active); then exi; and then I closed the cmd box.

Next, I restarted, with my DVD still in the drive; however, upon reboot, (and BIOS is set to read disc drive first, then HDD) instead of seeing the "hit any key to launch from DVD..." screen, it immediately just started loading Windows files from the DVD - and I knew where this was going; it wasn't going to find my OS. So, when the Win 7 splash screen finally loaded, and I had "Install Now" in center of me, or "Repair" on the bottom, I of course clicked "Repair". It then brought me to the gray dialog box, w/a white center, where NORMALLY, it lists one, or several, OS'. In this case, I was correct - it found NO OS listed; zero. This is because my 7 HDD and XP HDD are somehow inextricably linked, and my XP HDD was currently set as "inactive". However, ever being the optimist, I clicked on "Next" anyway, and chose "Startup Repair". First, it started "scanning for issues", which took several seconds (and I took as a good sign); then, it went to "attempting repairs", for a few more seconds, which I took as an even better sign; finally, it ended with "Click 'Finish' to finish the repairs, and restart immediately." So of course I hit Finish, and it rebooted, and I left the DVD in.

Well, it rebooted, and guess what? First came the "hit any key to launch...", which I did not. Next it brought me to the "Windows Boot Manager" black and white screen, and said "What OS do you want?", where of course, there is only one option: my Windows 7 OS (it actually reads Windows 7 (recovered)), so I clicked on that, and bam, I was right back into 7 again, but still needing the disk. Well, I opened up Disk Management inside of 7, and my suspicions were confirmed; that "fix" that the 7 DVD did was to make my XP HDD back to "Active" status! And just to confirm that, I took out the DVD, hit reboot, and yep, upon startup, it simply went to the "BOOTMGR is missing" screen.

So, it truly appears that these two drives are connected, and the "fix" that the 7 disc did was to make the XP inactive back to active. So anything else I should try? Would this even work again, if I again went back to the CMD line, made XP inactive, and then phsyically unhooked the XP HDD? Or would that just botch things up completely?

Thoughts?

 

[davidshea]

Ok, an *UPDATE*!!!

It's fixed! At least, all signs point to it! What I did was, I re-did everything that I did in my latest post, from what SIW2 told me to do (go to the Command line, make my XP HDD inactive, then exit). Then I actually SHUT DOWN my PC, opened it, unhooked the XP HDD, and THEN rebooted. Needless to say, the Win 7 DVD found several errors, and I had to reboot twice.

However, after the third time of clicking on "Startup Repair", if found no errors, so, I rebooted again (still with no XP HDD hooked up, only the 7 HDD), took out the DVD, and it booted just fine into Windows 7! Hell's freakin' yeah!

The only funny thing/oddity about it is, even though I currently only have one OS running, and only one physical HDD hooked up, at boot up time, after the BIOS flash page, it still brings me to the black and white "Windows Boot Manager" screen, and it still asks me to "choose which OS I want to startup", but it only lists Windows 7 Ultimate, because that's all I have. So I still have to hit "enter" at that point, and THEN it brings me into 7 launch.

Isn't that strange? Is there anything I should do about that?

 

[SIW2]

If it bothers you, open an admin cmd and type:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu No

 

[Saltgrass]

Is there only one Win 7 option in the boot menu or more than one?

If you open Msconfig.exe, under the boot tab, does it show only one boot option there?

Could you take another picture of your disk management and attach?

Could you take another picture of the bcdedit display in the command window?

Try setting the bios back to boot directly to the HDD first to test. Change back later if you like.