Windows 7 Setting Up Dual Boot with Windows 7 and Windows XP on Separate Hard Drives

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awhitecloud

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Can someone please help me make windows 7 work it has it's own hard drive and I can not make it allow me to boot to my windows XP at all. Please can someone help me to make them both work????


Thank you,

awhitecloud
 
Solution
S
Hi Mari,

You can add an entry for the XP partition/drive to 7 bcd - you will then get both showing in the boot menu - just select which you want to boot into.

It is not difficult.

Please post a screenshot of the Disk Management Window, like this:

Link Removed due to 404 Error
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I have an AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual, Pricessor 4600+ 2.41 GHz, 2.00 GB of Ram

I had zp running and added a new hdd and installed windows 78 on it, I followed the instructions and then restarted and MS said it should fin my XP well it does not as far as to boot. In Windows 7 I can see the drives and that has slowed down 7 to a crawl.

I am not sue how to add XP into the boot so that it knows that it is there?
 
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Hi Drew ,

It would be nice if you posted your solution.

Then we can learn what method you are using.

Also we won't post the same solution you have already suggested if we know what it is.

Thanks
 
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Hi Mari,

You can add an entry for the XP partition/drive to 7 bcd - you will then get both showing in the boot menu - just select which you want to boot into.

It is not difficult.

Please post a screenshot of the Disk Management Window, like this:

Link Removed due to 404 Error
 
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Solution
Dual boot works fine but I doubt if anybodys works the same as mine!

When I wanted to install Windows 7 in a dual bood configuration with Windows XP I read as much as I could about how to do it. I already had a blank partition left for this purpose when I had installed XP. I had no problem installing Windows 7 but did have problems getting the boot menu to come up. I tried BCDedit and everything else that I could find info about. It came down to the point that when I wanted to boot to Windows 7 I would put the installation disc in the drive thinking I might use the repair mode but "lo and behold" if I had the Windows 7 DVD in the drive but did not boot to it I would get the boot menu so I could select Win 7. But I finally figured out that if I got that boot menu and decided that I wanted to go back to XP I couldn't. It would instead reboot the computer and as long as I had the Win 7 DVD in the drive I could not actually get to XP, but if I take the Win 7 DVD out it comes up with no boot menu and goes directly into Windows XP. I know that this is not how it is suppossed to work but it does for me.

Now my "big question" is how do I delete the Win Xp completely and recover the space in that partition to add to the Windows 7 partition?
 
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Dual-Boot

I have "triple-boot".
I have two HDs: 320Gb, partitioned to 20Gb > C:, 300Gb >D. This drive has my Windows XP Pro on it.
I added another HD: 500Gb. which I partitioned 22Gb > C:, 460Gb > D:, 24Gb > E:
After installing Vista on my "C:" partition on 500Gb., I ended up with dual-boot. Then I installed Win7 on E: (24Gb)
When I re-booted, I ended up with Triple-Boot.

Windows is always on C: irrespective of the partition or drive. The rest of the Drive letters alter with each different boot.

I used BCDedit to edit my triple boot so that Win7 is 1st, Vista is 2nd & XP 3rd.
 
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Still trying to clean up after uninstalling a dual boot.

I got Win 7 installed in a dual boot system with Win XP Pro. Then decided to get rid of the Win XP so I used Disk Management and formated the partititon that XP resided on. Then I used gParted to regain the space that had been the XP Partition so everything is working now but I still have to have the Win 7 installation DVD in the drive when I boot up - if not the computer just keeps rebooting. I have discovered that some of the boot files are actually on another drive - the master drive on the primary IDE channel while the Boot drive is the first SATA drive. I thought if I disconnected the first drive and booted to the installation DVD and choose the repair function I could fix that problem. When I did it told me it was fixing the boot up problems and restart, When it restarted it still had to have the DVD in the drive to work. Also now I can try to boot to the installation DVD and it will get to the "pretty screen" but does not display any options at all.
I have tried to run BCDedit and it says "access denied" I would really like to know all files that have to be there for it to boot and how they work. I believe it is way more complicated than the ntldr of old.
 
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Hi Superaggie,

The name you have given your F partition is hilarious.

As you have used Gparted - the first thing is to run check disk on the G partition ( and the C partition for good measure)

Windows boot management always boots all o/s thru the "System" partition.

The System partition is the the partition containing the boot management files, thru which the operating System is booted.

The BOOT partition contains the operating system you are currently BOOTed into.

It is the opposite of what you might expect.

Your System partition is G. The 7 boot management files should be on there. They are hidden, so you need to show hidden files and protected operating sytem files ( in Folder options ) to see them.

The 7 boot files will actually be in two places.

Bootmgr and a pale yellow folder ( containing bcd) will ALWAYS be on the first partition that was marked ACTIVE when 7 was installed. That will be the System partition.

It seems the first Active partition the 7 installer came across was on Disk 1 (G) as that was first HD in Bios boot order when you installed 7.

The bootloader ( winload.exe ) will ALWAYS be on the partition containing the 7 o/s files.

In your case , that is 2 different partitions.

It is different from legacy versions of Windows , where NTLDR was both boot manager and boot loader.

What I think you are wanting to do is to make the 7 drive the System drive - and 7 partition (C) The System partition ?

If your Bios insists on treating the IDE Drive as first in boot order- you could rt click G and mark inactive.

Easiest is to reinstall 7 onto C with Drive 0 as the first HD in Bios boot order and G marked inactive.

Another way that should work is to run startup repair with C Active and G inactive - you would need to run it several times as it only fixes one thing at a time - 4 or 5 runs will probably be needed.

Alternatively, you could use the command prompt to write an NT6 compatible Mbr and bootsector code onto Disk 0.

Then EITHER run startup repair ( twice ) to create bootmgr and Boot folder on C,

OR copy the boot management files from G to C - you can do it with copy and paste and one bcdedit command.

Hope it helps
 
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Hi SIW2,
You have certainly given me a wealth of information - some of it I had begun to see as I dealt with this problem and some of it still a ways over my head. I had figured out the the G partition was necessary for the boot up process and I had seen the boot files there in a directory named boot. Originally there was not a "boot" directory on C. Actually I began to learn some of this when I first tried to install Windows 7 in the unallocated space that I had left for that purpose. When I would try to install it I would recieve an error that there was not enough free space on "Disk One" and that setup had to write some files there. I didn't know why it needed to write files there and secondly I could see lots of space there but I completely cleaned the drive off an reformated it but that didn't help. I finally realized that I had that whole drive marked as an "extended partition" andwhen I changed it to a "Basic drive" I was able to install 7.What I should have done then was disconnect Disk one and then install and I wouldn't be having the problems now.
I think I have decided to do a clean reinstall after I either disconnect Disc one or mark it inactive. However I would still like to ask a couple of questions for the sake of learning more.
The first is why I cannot get startup repair to run after it ran one time. As I said in my earlier message when I boot to the DVD now it goes through everything up to and including "starting Windows" and I get the pretty wallpaper but nothing else. This had happened before and then for some reason I got it to run once yesterday.
Next is BCDedit. When I go to a command prompt and type BCDedit I get:
"The boot configuration data store could not be opened.
Access is denied."
On my other computer with Vista I get the same thing but I know I had run a couple of command line bcdedit commands before.
Where could I learn how to use a command prompt to write an NT6 compatible Mbr and bootsector code? (This is probably way over my head)
Thank you very much for all of your help.
 
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Hi,

You need to rt click and run as admin on cmd - that will be an elevated cmd prompt and you won't get the "access is denied".

Link Removed due to 404 Error

If you want to always run it elevated, rt click cmd, select Properties>Advanced - tick Run as Admin, OK , Apply, OK

Link Removed due to 404 Error

You might post a screenshot of bcdedit, like this:



Link Removed due to 404 Error
 
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Link Removed

I thought since I was a computer administrator that it should automatically "run as administrator" but you were right (again)!

Now you said earlier that if I copied the boot management files from G to C and one bcdedit command.
I have copied the files but because I had run startup repair there is a BCD file on both drives, do I overwrite the one on C with the one on G? What BCDedit command do I need to issue?


UPDATE: You don't need to answer the above question unless you just want to give me more info for future needs. I actually got everything working the way I want it to. I discovered that I had not copied the Bootmgr file and when I did that and then disconnected G drive and booted to the DVD and ran "Startup Repair" again it took care of everything. Thank you again for all the help.
 
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screen shots ????


I can not get the screen shot into this window
 
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don't want to go terrorist and hijack this thread but considering the OP is solved i hope it's okay.I'm involved in a related situation: Link Removed and will soon be doing this myself and want to be ahead of the curve. I'm used to the old NTldr and boot.ini but as i learned from swi2 those days are over.Ive got btmngr copied and saved but do i want the entire boot folder off my system drive or simply BCD or BCD and BCDlogs 0-3. I'm assuming i need to boot into xp to copy them which sucks i was hoping to never do that again but i''ve tried every dirty trick i know and i cant get read permission from 7 which is weird because it shows my account as having the necessary permissions.Maybe these can be copied from the install DVD i've done that in XP but i mostly skipped vista and this is all pretty new .I think all i will need to make seven bootable again after i format XP is a copy of these files to the root of my seven installation using a utility that willplace them on the boot sector or is that not necessary?
 
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one way

okay the only way I can dual boot si to use F8 each time I restart my PC. And then to just chose which drive I want. If it restarts on it's one for any reason well it will boot back into XP even if I am running 7 at the time. So each time you most be there to use F8 if you want to get into Windows 7.
 
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