Windows 7 Triple Boot XP/Vista/7 - error with win 7 winload.exe

Blueguitar · Oct 28, 2009

Hi All

I am trying to get windows 7 to boot after installing it along side XP and Vista.

The OS's are all on seperate HDDs, all SATA and Win 7 having the luxury of being on SSD.

I have had the system on dual boot for about 2 years now and liking the flexibility, so I don't want to completly wreck the current setup.

Win 7 installed fine and first boot was OK and I had a little play around. On restart it was missing from the Boot manager. So I added it via DualBootPro 1.0. It appeared in the list and I made sure Vista was still OK, it was. Win 7 however came up with the missing or corrupt error relating to the winload.exe and sent me back to the OS choices.

After reading similar posts on the web I can see it as being a mix up with the boot files/paths. The BCD seems logically fine to look at but there is something underlying with it I can't put my finger on.

I have used DualBootPro in the Vista install and done the obvious to add Win 7 >> Add New OS entry >> Select Win 7 >> Select Drive I: (as it appears in Vista) >> Apply Updates. Reboot

One thing the SSD must be using a "System Reserved" drive it has created, I presume this is normal for SSD buffering and alike. The drive is drive G:

Also all my boot related files for the OS's seem to be on the XP drive.

Thanks

Blueguitar

Blueguitar · Oct 31, 2009

Hi

Its working now !!!

I did what reghakr suggested and booted from win 7 drive, it only went into 7. Installed Easy BCD 1.7.2 and added XP and Vista. On boot up only XP and NOT Vista were there, and it didn't work. Got back into Win 7 and installed Dual Boot Pro 1.0 it only listed XP and Win 7 like the boot manager. (Where as Easy BCD was listing that I had added all 3 for OS choice)

So I removed XP on DB1.0 and added it again from there and added Vista. Rebooted and they were all there.

Vista and Win 7 worked fine, XP didn't. So I copied the boot.ini, the nldr and the ntdetect.com from the old drive used to boot (one with XP on it) to the "System reserved" Drive where the Win 7 boot manager was now being used...

Blueguitar · Oct 31, 2009

Hi

Its working now !!!

I did what reghakr suggested and booted from win 7 drive, it only went into 7. Installed Easy BCD 1.7.2 and added XP and Vista. On boot up only XP and NOT Vista were there, and it didn't work. Got back into Win 7 and installed Dual Boot Pro 1.0 it only listed XP and Win 7 like the boot manager. (Where as Easy BCD was listing that I had added all 3 for OS choice)

So I removed XP on DB1.0 and added it again from there and added Vista. Rebooted and they were all there.

Vista and Win 7 worked fine, XP didn't. So I copied the boot.ini, the nldr and the ntdetect.com from the old drive used to boot (one with XP on it) to the "System reserved" Drive where the Win 7 boot manager was now being used. (Note: this was done in Vista as it had assigned a drive letter to the system reserved drive and Win 7 hadn't. The reason I have the system reserve drive is due to the install of Win7 being installed to the drive with unallocated partition and not yet formatted - if anyone was wondering) XP still didn't launch.

Had a closer look at the boot.ini now on that drive and the rdisk was pointing to first drive drive which is 0. Changed it to 1 and perfect XP booted up like a dream.

I booted all 3 to be sure all was well and it was.

Thanks to all for the help.

reghakr · Nov 1, 2009

Ecellent glad you got it!!,

I was almost ready to suggest XP mode for Windows 7.

Good job by SIW2 for the EASyDCD solution

Windows 7 Triple Boot XP/Vista/7 - error with win 7 winload.exe

Blueguitar

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Blueguitar

Blueguitar

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reghakr

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