Windows 7 Dual Booting

[Joe S]

I've searched some and it sounds like dual booting Vista and Windows 7 is simply a matter of creating a new partition and installing Windows 7 there. A few questions. Is it really that simple? Is there a need for another boot manager or repairs to it like with XP and Vista? Since this is a beta and I activated it on a virtual pc will I be able to activate it on the actual pc with my code? Right now with Windows 7 on a VMware Workstation the more advanced things don't work like Aero. I've got a HP d5000t pc 64 bit with 8 gigs of ram and would like a better comparison than on the virtual PC. I also have my PC partitioned and the data on another partition.
Thanks
Joe

 

[Moosetek13]

Yes it is that easy.
No need for other boot managers.
Activation is no problem. There are only a handfull of numbers for all the copies out there.

 

[ComputerGeek]

On one computer I am actually tripple booting WinXP, WinVista and Win7 and on another I am dual booting WinVista and Win7 with no problems on either. Whenever you multi boot, just remember you have to install the oldest OS first.

One issue I ran into on my dual boot computer was I have 2 HD installed. I have WinVista on a 40gb drive and a second 300gb drive that I was using for files and backups. I partitioned the 300gb drive to a 30 and a 270 gb drive. After I installed Win7 on the 30gb partiton of the second drive, it wiped the MBR and erased the 270gb partition. I logged into the Vista side and used Paragon Disk Manager 2008 to restore the lost partition and all my files were still there.

 

[GreyBat]

After I installed Win7 on the 30gb partiton of the second drive, it wiped the MBR and erased the 270gb partition. I logged into the Vista side and used Paragon Disk Manager 2008 to restore the lost partition and all my files were still there.

That's weird.

I also had a Vista partition and an XP partition on the same drive. I compressed the Vista partition to make a new 40gb partition for Win7. It installed perfectly except for one thing. XP would not start (HAL.DLL file not found). After a little research, I found the problem. Inserting a new primary partition between the Vista and XP partitions had changed the XP partition number. The XP partition was now partition(4) on the drive, so I had to edit the BOOT.INI file and change the XP Boot Loader settings. (VistaBootPro will change Vista and Win7 settings, but won't change XP settings. At least, I haven't found out how!!)

If anyone wants to know how to do that....

1. Determine the correct partition number. Look in Admin Tools>Disk Management>Storage and find the drive where your XP partition is located. Partitions are numbered in sequence (from 1) from the left EXCEPT primary partitions come before logical ones. My XP happened to be on a logical partition, so, although it looked like partition 3, it was actually partition 4.
2. Find your boot.ini file in the root directory of one of your drives. It may NOT be on the same drive where Vista locates the c: partition. In my case, it was on my D: drive, which also happens to be disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1).
3. Open a cmd window under Run as Administrator, navigate to boot.ini, then run attrib boot.ini -s -h -r. Leave the window open
4. Use Notepad, also Run as Administrator, open the boot.ini file and make the necessary changes. I believe you need to change the partition number in both the default= line and the line under [operating systems] that points to the system you are trying to fix. You shold not have to change the disk or rdisk numbers.
5. Save the changed file, then go back to your cmd window and reset the attributes. (attrib boot.ini +s +h +r)
6. Done! Try to reboot. If it still doesn't work, you may have got the partition numbers wrong.

Hope this is helpful for someone!

 

[JKo]

Missing HAL.DLL and no BOOT.INI

My WinXP now will not boot after I installed Windows 7. I have the option on boot-up for Win XP, Vista, or Win7. Both Vista and Win7 are OK. WinXP now gets the message - missing or corrupt HAL.DLL. There is not a BOOT.INI on any drive - even my backups. Now what?

 

[GreyBat]

My WinXP now will not boot after I installed Windows 7. I have the option on boot-up for Win XP, Vista, or Win7. Both Vista and Win7 are OK. WinXP now gets the message - missing or corrupt HAL.DLL. There is not a BOOT.INI on any drive - even my backups. Now what?

Have you made sure you can have UNCHECKED "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" in your Folder view options (advanced settings)? You should also "Show hidden files, folders and drives". Ignore the warning! If you don't do that, you will not see boot.ini. But it MUST be there somewhere...... XP would never be able to boot without it.

Your problem is exactly the same as mine, by the way. Once you find the boot.ini file, you only have to change the partition number. The message you are getting is thoroughly confusing!

 

[Joe S]

Last night I finally loaded Windows 7 on my actual pc Vista 64 bit. I made a mistake when I tried the first time and forgot to dsconnect my external HD. There was some type of conflict I think a driver for the external hd. So I used True Image to restore reformatted the partition from Vista disconnected the external hd and reloaded windows 7. Both systems booted without errors this time. Next I installed the 64 bit software for the external hd and everything works fine.
I notice a huge differance between actual PC and Vmware! Now I have a Windows experience score of 5.9 on Vmware only 2.0
Joe

 

[JKo]

Have you made sure you can have UNCHECKED "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" in your Folder view options (advanced settings)? You should also "Show hidden files, folders and drives". Ignore the warning! If you don't do that, you will not see boot.ini. But it MUST be there somewhere...... XP would never be able to boot without it.

Your problem is exactly the same as mine, by the way. Once you find the boot.ini file, you only have to change the partition number. The message you are getting is thoroughly confusing!

My bad. I had lots of trouble finding the Folder view options in Vista - so, I learned something. It turns out that it is not Win7 causing the problem, but simply adding a new partition which I did using Vista after I restored. I am going to go back and see why/what partition WinXP is on my old drive out of curiosity. Thanks for hitting me over the head - JKo.

 

[GreyBat]

My bad. I had lots of trouble finding the Folder view options in Vista - so, I learned something. It turns out that it is not Win7 causing the problem, but simply adding a new partition which I did using Vista after I restored. I am going to go back and see why/what partition WinXP is on my old drive out of curiosity. Thanks for hitting me over the head - JKo.

No problem, JKo. Hope the head feels better!

Just to show how it works, these are the partitions on my drive where Vista, Win 7 and XP are installed, in order from left to right as shown in Disk Management (under Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Services) - drive letters are Win7 assignments; they are different in Vista and XP, but the partition numbers do not change:
Vista (W): Primary Partition
Win7 (C): Primary Partition (added to install the beta, which pushed the XP partition down one number - same thing probably happened to you!)
XP (H): Logical Partition
New Volume (L): Logical Partition
Other (V): Primary Partition.

The PARTITION number order of these drives (by drive letter above): 1- W, 2 - C, 3 - V, 4 - H, 5 - L. The V drive is the 3rd partition because it is a primary partition and comes before all logical partitions!

 

[JKo]

No problem, JKo. Hope the head feels better!

Just to show how it works, these are the partitions on my drive where Vista, Win 7 and XP are installed, in order from left to right as shown in Disk Management (under Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Services) - drive letters are Win7 assignments; they are different in Vista and XP, but the partition numbers do not change:
Vista (W): Primary Partition
Win7 (C): Primary Partition (added to install the beta, which pushed the XP partition down one number - same thing probably happened to you!)
XP (H): Logical Partition
New Volume (L): Logical Partition
Other (V): Primary Partition.

The PARTITION number order of these drives (by drive letter above): 1- W, 2 - C, 3 - V, 4 - H, 5 - L. The V drive is the 3rd partition because it is a primary partition and comes before all logical partitions!

Hey GreyBat,
I think the head is getting worse. I waded through your response and understand what you are saying, but, I have no Logical Partitions on my drive - I have 4 Healthy, Primary Partitions on the new drive that I cloned from the previous drive (which had 3 Primaries) - then I let the Win7 install a new Primary. So, my partitions on the old and new drive are in the same order: 1 = Recovery (FAT32), 2 = WinXP (NTFS - Active Primary), 3 - WinVB (NTFS - Boot Primary), & 4 (on the new drive) - Win7 (Primary), plus Unallocated space on the new drive.
Now, the Boot.ini with old drive had WinXP as partition 1 which I had to change to partition 2 on the new drive only after I installed the 4th partition. Oh well, now it works and I will add it to the ol' tool bag if I every run into it again - but why is still a question.
Again, Thanks for the info. - JKo

 

[Obsidian]

Hi there,

new day, new hardware, new problems!

So, I've been running a clean install of 7 for a few weeks now, I've solved some problems with help here before and I'm hoping you can help me out some more.
Got a project going at Uni that requires me to use Mac OSX, not enough money for a real Mac, but having had XP, Ubuntu and now 7 I figured I could install yet another OS.
Long story short, my MoBo wasn't compatible, so I went out and got a new one including a new HDD.

Asus P5E VM HDMI MoBo + a Western Digital 16MB Cache 1TB SATA HDD.

Popped everything in, installed 7 first, apart from missing a driver for the LAN (Which I solved by downloading and installing the XP version - worked like a dream) everything worked perfectly.
Now for the big test - Mac OSX.
Wiped 7 off the drive, and installed a vanilla Mac OSX, just to see if it'd work. No probs there loaded in one go.

So, everything was going my way, I figured now I know both systems work, I'll partition my drive and have them dualboot with a 3rd "Shared" partition so when I'm doing Uni work I can atleast listen to my music and swap files out etc. etc.
So far I've tried two guides

The first one is a Windows 7 / Mac OSX Dualboot, making use of EasyBCD and the Windows Bootloader.
It makes you install OSX first, then 7, then manipulate the bootloader in 7 to let you dualboot OSX.
The second one is a Windows Vista / Mac OSX Dualboot, making use of the Darwin bootloader. It makes you install Vista first, then OSX and manipulate the bootloader via Terminal and the Vista bootdisk to allow you to dual boot.

Both guides, sadly, have failed me and only turn up an " H00000000 HFS+ partition error "
There have been some problems during the guides though; for instance:
the command line " y " in either Terminal or CMD don't do anything and just return an error. I dunno what these people are doing, but it looks weird and doesn't do anything.
The utilities -> Darwin bootloader menu doesn't exist in the MacOSX installer. Found out later it had been taken out and included somewhere behind the scenes.

Anyone got any idea's or tips? =/
Running kind of low on inspiration as this is the last option I have to do my Coursework for Uni.

thanks in advance!

EDIT:
Solution found, describing it here for future reference:

Partition your drive (Either with the windows or mac installers - I prefer the mac one)
Install your Mac OS X (There are plenty of tutorials all over the web for your preferred version. Mine is 10.5.2 Kalyway)
Create your Mac account etc etc
Restart and install Windows 7 on your other partition
Boot straight into windows
update etc etc
Download the EasyBCD 2.0 Beta from Link Removed
Add a setting for Mac (Really easy, just click: Add)
Done! Should work perfectly.