How to boot into Windows 7 after installing Windows XP on the same HDD?
2014-07
sammyg
I installed Windows XP in an unallocated space of a HDD that already had Windows 7 installed on. Installation completed, Windows XP boots, but Windows 7 won't. From the moment I press the power button it boots straight to Windows XP. It shows no OS choice menu, and when I press and hold F8 to get to advanced start options and switch over to the OS choice menu I see only "Windows XP Professional".
How do I boot into Windows 7 now? How do I get a boot menu where I can pick and choose which OS to load? Do I have to do it all over again now?
I did a clean install of Windows XP. So I booted from the Windows XP disc, and in the setup program I just chose to install it to the unallocated space on the disk drive. I only had two primary partitions on the HDD. But instead of creating a third primary partition, the setup program created an extended partition and a logical partition inside it. See screenshot below.
That F partition was not there when I started Windows XP installation. It was unallocated space.
Who said that Windows can only be installed on a primary partition?
I have already tried the Dual-boot Repair tool and the Visual BCD Editor without any success. The latter won't even run. Because Windows XP didn't use BCD store.
snayob
You do not have to reinstall anything - you have already installed Windows XP after having Windows 7.
A) You run Dual-boot Repair -> "Automatic Repair" in Windows XP.
This will make you boot by default to Windows 7.
B) In Windows 7 run Visual BCD Editor.
C) Type F9 (or context menu "Create missing Windows loaders") - this will create boot loader/menu entry for Windows XP in Windows 7 BCD (Boot Configuration Data) store. After reboot you will have a dual-boot choice of Windows 7 and Windows XP.
That's all. And it's that simple ;)
snayob
Booting is not rocket science.
BIOS Firmware boots to first disk set in firmware.
MBR from first disk is loaded and executed.
Active partition is taken from info in MBR.
Boot record of active partition is loaded.
In case Windows XP the file "ntldr" from active partition is loaded and executed, in case Windows 7 the file "bootmgr" (from active partition) is loaded and executed.
Boot configuration data for XP is stored in "boot.ini" or in "\boot\BCD" for Windows 7.
So the main thing - all boot related files must be on active partition (for XP and for 7)
Windows boot loader cannot boot a system on another physical disk AFAIK - you have to use BIOS boot selection key for another disk.
When you install any Windows version to a disk you must detach all other disks to avoid future boot problems !!!
Frank
I am not expecting an exact answer here but a just a list of things to troubleshoot would be good. I am trying to fix a friend's computer and thought I almost had it. Here's what has been done up to this point:
The graphics card was loose and the hard drives were not being recognized - could not load windows. I secured the graphics card and after searching around discovered that if I take the drives out of the RAID they were in and put them into ATA mode then they are detected. So far so good.
I then insert a copy of Windows XP Media Center 2005 as was on it before and boot from CD. I select one of the two hard drives to install windows on. I format the drive and it proceeds into copying the files - all done with no complaints. Then, it must restart, it says to leave the CD in the drive and press enter to restart or it will do it itself after 15 seconds. Here is where I am having trouble. Normally, it starts up (this time it should want to boot from the HDD if the boot order is correct in the BIOS - is this correct?) and we progress to Windows Setup etc. However, all I'm getting is a too-quick-to-read flash of an error 'Cannot read C:/Windows' I think. Then automatically restarts and repeats. If I boot from disk I'm back into the beginning of installing windows.
Just in case the install was bad I formatted the drive again and let it copy the files but the same thing happened on restart. My copy of Windows is spread across two disks but I noticed it never asked for the second disk, I thought it might be needed once we get into the Windows setup part.
Now when I power up I am getting nothing. No too-quick-to-read error message nothing but a flashing underscore and no response. In case it indicates anything, one press of the power button does not shut it down I have to hold it in for the full 6 seconds.
There are the facts. If anyone can Sherlock Holmes some ideas about what might be wrong I will be very grateful!!
Thanks
Frank
Austin V
My first suggestion would be to double check the BIOS to make sure you've changed the HDD config from RAID to ATA, also check your pinout on both drives. Chances are that although you can read/write Windows to it during install, the drive you installed it on may be set to "SLAVE" or not set at all. Hope this helps.