Windows 7 Please help. Dual boot screw up.

[Chrisd11]

I am running Win7. My 4yr old got an interactive Dora doll that I couldn't get working.
After hours on the phone with Dora support and researching others experience, I decided it just wasn't getting along with 7. I decided the easiest thing to do would be just install Xp and dual boot. With the help of an upset 4yr old and a sleepy 2yr old I screwed up. They are both on the same drive. I think insteat of creating a small partition I told it to leave other windows intact and install. Now it doesn't give a choice, just boots straight into XP. Xp shows it's installed on (D. My best guess is that it change the drive letter from C: to D: and now the system no lingers sees windows 7 on the boot. Any ideas on how I can get my Windows 7 back?

 

[RAK]

I think if you have accidentally installed on the same partition you have, as you say, really screwed up.
But if XP is working to your satisfaction, your quicker option at this stage is to create a partition sufficient for Windows 7, and then reinstall windows 7. It will automatically set up a new dual boot for you.
Having done that, you will be in a better position to assess the , possibly, surplus data left over in you XP installation, from the old 7, and remove it or , if personal, save it somewhere else.
It would be a good idea also, at this stage, to have a look at your present installation and collect all your personal data together on to anpther hard disk or CD.

 

[patcooke]

If it's using drive D it sounds like maybe it has actually installed to a separate partition and you have just overwritten the boot information - which can be changed. First go to Control Panel, Administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management. Look to see what partitions you have and what is on each of them. Let us know and we can take it from there.

 

[Saltgrass]

What happened is normal for installing XP after Win 7. As Pat says, the Win 7 boot has been overwritten and you need to get it back. Also as Pat mentions, since installs can vary it is always good to have a picture of the Disk Management window. In XP you might be able to screen capture or use a camera and attach the picture using the paper clip.

One way to recover the Win 7 boot is to boot to the Win 7 install DVD and go to repair and then command prompt. At the command prompt window, type the following followed by enter.

bootsect /nt60 sys

You can check on the usage on this page.

You might also be able to run the command by just loading the Win 7 install DVD (not booting). Open a command prompt in XP and type the following with enter after. The Drive letter should be that of your DVD.

D:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 sys

Close back out of the repair and you should now be able to boot into Win 7.

An alternative to dual booting XP is the XP virtual machine which is available in some versions of Win 7.

You might also try running the Dora software in a compatibility mode for the original software.

 

[patcooke]

All comments are good information but first and foremost I'd still check as I described to ascertain just what you've got on your drive and where it is.

 

[Saltgrass]

I should add, since there is a chance of the commands may not work correctly, to return to the XP boot you should be able to boot to the DVD and replace the 60 with 52 in the command. This should replace the XP boot sequence.

The reason for some of the caution is that installing XP after 7 can cause certain problems that might be hard to diagnose without good information about your system.

And there are other commands that might be used to fix the boot on your system.

There is a process where you can set up a dual boot from within XP by downloading Net Framework and then EasyBCD v2 beta from the site after joining their forum. I don't normally recommend doing it this way, although EasyBCD works well, but it is an option.