Dual boot woes

937 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by DT Roberts, Jul 3, 2010

shayne122

Discussion Starter · Jun 30, 2010

Hello,

I had a fully working Windows 7 / XP dual boot setup as of yesterday, both installed on a 320gb SATA drive.

Also plugged in is a 200gb IDE drive.

I decided to experiment by installing a version of Ubuntu on the IDE. Of course, this installs GRUB. I realized afterwards that driver issues were going to prevent me from working efficiently in the system (only has a PCI wireless card, and driver building from tar files is a little beyond me).

For some reason, grub was only allowing me to boot into 7, and not the XP partition. I decided grub was the problem, and formatted the IDE hard drive, installing instead off a 7 beta disc I had, with the intention of using easyBCD (had setup file on XP drive) to reinstate the boot record.

I have followed every step, and it will still only boot in to my original SATA 7.

Unfortunately my XP partition is what I'll been needing for the next few days, but I'm having trouble booting into it.

I thought that maybe easyBCD is just having issues with 7, so I installed a vanilla version of XP onto the IDE, and repeated my steps with easyBCD.

now, the IDE (new XP) will only boot. even though the bootloader is as such:

(handwritten, sorry)

Entry #1
Windows Vista //----this is my original 7 that won't boot
BCD ID: {default}
Drive: E:\
Bootable Path: \Windows

Entry 2
Microsoft Windows //---orignal xp
BCD ID: {---hex code here}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

Entry 3
xp2 //---new xp on IDE
BCD ID: {---same hex code here}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

Is this how it should look?

it won't even enter the bootloader, it just goes right into XP for some reason.

When I set my SATA as primary, it doesn't boot into anything, just gives me a blinking cursor.

Thank you, hope I haven't left anything out.

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i MaRk i

· #2 · Jun 30, 2010 (Edited)

first can you post a screenshot of Disk Managment (Start | right-click "Computer" | "Manage" | "disk Managment" tab)

also go to an elevated CMD prompt and type:

Code:

bcdedit > C:\BCDupload.txt

and upload the text file at the root of C:

Edit: you took GRUB off of the System, correct?

Edit2: If you want Ubuntu, use Wubi to install it (http://wubi-installer.org/) and here is the FAQ

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shayne122

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 30, 2010

I will post what you requested once I'm back to the studio, but thought it was may be worth mentioning that I removed the IDE drive and used Super Grub Disk to install a new MBR on just the SATA disk. This allows me to boot directly into XP, though I can't get easyBCD to give me the choice of what I'd like to boot into.

GRUB is off the system, yes. and I'd like to avoid Wubi, as the poor disk performance would hamper the computer's usefulness as a digital audio workstation. Otherwise, however, that would a great choice.

Thanks for your help, again once I return I'll post screenshots.

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i MaRk i

· #4 · Jul 3, 2010

Sorry, i did not know that you could not boot into 7 so forget that cmd command

then you have to reinstall the Windows MBR - Tutorial: http://www.ehow.com/how_4836283_repair-mbr-windows.html

Then you should be able to boot into Win. 7 and then run the command that I posted above.

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DT Roberts

· #5 · Jul 3, 2010

Just for clarification, the reason that EasyBCD won't work under XP is because XP uses a different version of the MBR than Vista and Windows 7. Repairing the MBR in the manner that Mark mentioned should get you right back into Windows 7.

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