Windows 7 How to change partitions to boot Win7

The first thing that comes to mind is EasyBCD, which is a free boot manager "editing" program. It should help in switching the boot sequences for Win 7 (and XP possibly, if it recognizes it). As far as the other legacy OSs you are running, I don't hold much hope of success, but I wish you good luck.

daprez546 said:

The first thing that comes to mind is EasyBCD, which is a free boot manager "editing" program. It should help in switching the boot sequences for Win 7 (and XP possibly, if it recognizes it). As far as the other legacy OSs you are running, I don't hold much hope of success, but I wish you good luck.

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I did install EasyBCD. But I don't seem to understand how the bootloader works. I set up another boot option for the other partition, but it boot to it, it keeps going to the one originally installed on hd2. I also don't understand how the hd2 Win7 install is listed as harddiskvolume17.

Right now the boot loader only sees XP and the Win7 install on hd2. Nothing I've done gets the copied Win7 install on hd0 to boot.

So you got rid of Windows 2000 but kept Windows ME?? I'm sorry but that just doesn't make sense..

I suspect that your boot manager can't see the hd0 copy specifically because it is a copy. I would almost bet that if you were to do a clean install of the original setup file to the hd0 partition (using a different key which you can get from MS just to be safe), then EasyBCD would see both instances of Win 7 RC and XP. From there, just use EasyBCD to set the boot order, and when it is set to (1) Win 7 on hd0, (2) XP on hd0, and (3) Win 7 on hd2, check to see that you can enter and exit from each instance without incident. Then you can delete the hd2 instance.

Whew. I hope that helps. Again, good luck.

Radenight said:

So you got rid of Windows 2000 but kept Windows ME?? I'm sorry but that just doesn't make sense..

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I didn't "get rid" of W2k, I deleted the partition on hd0. I have a backup partition of it on another drive. WinMe is the drive that Boot Magic is installed on (fat32). I was hoping to get Boot Magic back in play, but the way the bootloader works in Win7, it doesn't look like that will happen. Hardly any clients have Win98 or WinMe any more, same with W2k, so I might be getting rid of all of them and just have XP and Win7 partitions here on out.

daprez546 said:

I suspect that your boot manager can't see the hd0 copy specifically because it is a copy. I would almost bet that if you were to do a clean install of the original setup file to the hd0 partition (using a different key which you can get from MS just to be safe), then EasyBCD would see both instances of Win 7 RC and XP. From there, just use EasyBCD to set the boot order, and when it is set to (1) Win 7 on hd0, (2) XP on hd0, and (3) Win 7 on hd2, check to see that you can enter and exit from each instance without incident. Then you can delete the hd2 instance.

Whew. I hope that helps. Again, good luck.

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Thanks again for the reply. I thought someone with a lot of experience with the boot loader (something I don't have) would have responded with a quick answer. But maybe it's not as little a deal as I thought.

A "key" is required? I didn't get one, but it's installed.

I went ahead and deleted the install on hd2 to see if the install would repair the copy on hd0, but it wouldn't. So I deleted the partition and installed clean on hd0. It works the same now, I have XP & Win7 to choose from.

I take it there isn't a way to set up the Win98 & WinMe partitions in the bootloader? Not a big loss I guess. It's probably time to move on, regardless if I have a few clients that still use them. They'll probably retire before they get a new computer anyway...

Appreciate the feedback,
Terry

Glad you got to (about) where you wanted to be. You are right, the world marches on, and XP is now at the bottom of the OS totem pole.

But I also have Windows 98 (on a separate box) and there are programs I like to run there, like games for the grandkids.

If you are truly interested in having everything on one box, then you might look into a multiple boot manager program, like OSL2000 ($25.00 shareware), Smart Boot Manager (freeware), and/or Multiple Boot Manager (freeware).

I haven't used any of them, but I have heard they work quite well. Be careful with Multiple Boot Manager, it even carries a warning on download because it is so unforgiving of mistakes.