Windows 7 (on c:\) only booting from H:\

Larry365

Larry365

Larry365

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Hi guys.

Wondering if anyone can shed some light on this rather annoying issue. Its a lot to read, and probably quite hard to understand out of context but I will try my best to explain. Thanks.

I needed to use windows xp so digged through my pile of cds to find my winxp live cd. When booting from it, it presented itself as a live cd but, after about 5 mins of loading drivers, asked for a drive to install on. I thought, why not, and proceeded to install windows xp on drive H:\.

I think the mistake I have made here is that i chose to install to the drive with making no changes instead of formatting a creating a partition. If I'm honest, I thought it only needed to copy a few files onto the drive in order to run the live cd.

The issue I have now is that when booting, Windows 7 (C:\) no longer boots from C:\. I get a missing/currupt hal.dll message. To get windows 7 to boot, I have to boot from H:\, ie the windows xp installation drive. There is no sign of windows xp apart from the files on H:\.

Everything seems normal except easybcd detects only win7 as installed on c:\ but boots from h:\. Easybcd does not show winxp. The only other thing that i have noticed is I now get a GUI boot, something i usually disable.

I am not sure what the hell is going on here. I would like to remove the winxp installation but I am scared that I will not be able to boot into win7 at all if I do that. There is of course the option of repairing win7 from cd, but I am also worried that it will not repair the missing hal.dll file. I have a funny feeling, it is using the windows xp folder on h:\ to launch win 7 on c:\. I dont know how, and I wouldnt have thought there would be enough information in a winxp folder to launch 7. So I am utterly confused.

Again, if you would like to help but cant quite understand what I have said, please ask and I will explain in further detail

Many thanks in advance
Harry
 
Hey mate,

This is what I would do:

1. Download Macrium Reflect Free
2. Create a rescue CD
3. Boot into the rescue CD
4. Select 'fix boot problems' its called something like that...

This should resolve your issues if you follow the instructions correctly.

Stelly
 
You've overwritten the boot sector. XP pre-dates 7, therefore doesn't recognise it as a valid dual boot option and has obliterated its boot sector.

Try running bootsect.exe off the \boot folder on your Windows 7 DVD. That should fix it.
 
Excellent,

Thanks for the quick response guys. I'll try your response first MagicBoy and report back.

Stelly, I'll keep your suggestion in mind if Magic's suggestion doesn't do this trick.
 
Fixed!

Quick startup recovery from disc fixed it nicely. Thanks again.

As far as the winXP folder goes, located on h:\, is it safe and OK to just delete this folder?
 
bootmgr is missing.

OK, I may have been a bit quick to say that all this was fixed. The problem basically stems from the fact that I tried to install windows xp after windows 7 without following the correct steps. Ie, using easyBCD too early etc.

So yesterdays fix worked as far as windows 7 would only boot if I select H:\ as the primary boot drive. So I assume from this, when I ran the repairs, it rebuilt the win7 bcd but in the H:\ directory.

To try and rectify this without deleting the windows xp installation, (after all, this is ultimately what I am trying to achieve here) I disabled all HDD's in the bios, including the one with the xp partition, and left only my C: and D: drive enabled. (D: is my secondary installation drive as C is only a small SSD and didnt see the need to disable it as I think I may lose my raid if i did)

When trying to boot straight into C, I was getting a 'please insert system disk' message. When running repair from installation disc, no OS was detected in the little selection box. I fixed this by marking partition as active with diskpart then running the 4 bootrec commands. (fixmbr, fixboot, scanos, rebuildbcd) All completed successfully with absolutely NO ERRORS. However, I am now getting a 'bootmrg is missing error'. I ran the commands again, no errors, still missing. I tried running recorvery from installation cd and I am getting a 'This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows' message.

I'm really stumped guys. I'm not getting any errors in command and ive rebiult and repaird but bootmgr is nowhere to be seen :(

Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks
 
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