Problem with booting windows XP professional in the dual boot enviroment

[Dolke]

Hi there.

I have problem booting XP professional in the dual boot environment where second OS i Windows 7 ultimate. 

Both are 32-bit versions.

I have both windows XP and windows 7 cds.

I used utility called Easus to expand my windows partition as it run out of space and I couldn't any more data from it.

After several actions performed by the Easus software my partitions are now expanded and shrink as I wanted but that action messed up the bootloaders and MBR of both OS.

Using Windows 7 disk and Visual BCD utility I managed to boot into Windows 7 but cant make XP to work.

I tried all possible actions in recovery console but they didn't fix the problem. When I wanted to repair the installation I was not given that option in the XP setup, there is no repair option.

I also tried to reinstall XP from the 7 but I don't know how to do that.

When I boot into XP (I do have a drop down many to choose XP or 7) I dont get any error like ntdlr corrupted and similar, common issues, I just get blank, black screen.

Any suggestions?

Ty in advance

Dean

[boyans]

Hi Dean,

 

Sorry answering late.

I am on my new computer and experimenting with UEFI ;)

 

To boot XP you need 3 files on active partition:

ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini.

 

If you have a hidden SystemReserved partition the 3 files must be copied there

(map SystemReserved temporary to a drive letter for gaining access)

else see in DiskManagement which partition is active and copy the 3 files there.

 

You can delete loader entry for XP in BCD and let Visual BCD Editor create a new loader entry for XP

using "Create missing Windows loaders" (on right-click menu) if there is still a problem booting XP.

 

For information on boot.ini contents and ARC paths you could read

Dual-boot Windows XP/NT - ARC Paths, drives and boot.ini

 

Next version of Visual BCD will automatically fix missing XP boot files.

 

Hope this helps

Bo

[bubba]

ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini

What do you mean by active partition, you mean the original boot drive that the main menu runs off, or do you mean the drive that becomes active when it gets pointed to in the menu.


I am asking because I already had a dual boot setup, winXP and Win7, the Win7  automatically added the XP boot to the menu, and I cannot see those files on the Win7 partition.



I am using this software because I added a new SSD with a clean install of Win7 on it.  I want to now triple boot.   Your software successfully added the older Win7 partition, but the XP will not run.

[boyans]

Active partition is the partition that has the active flag. 

You can see which partition is active in disk management or with "diskpart.exe" command line utility.

On MBR disks the MBR code is loaded by BIOS and executed.

Then this code examines the MBR to find out which partition is active and loads the active partition boot record (PBR).

In Windows XP the PBR code loads "ntldr" again from active partition.

In Windows 7/Vista/8 PBR loads "bootmgr" (from active partition).

So all files like bootmgr, ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini must reside on active partition.

Boot-menu is displayed either by bootmgr (Windows 7) or by ntldr (XP) depending on contents of BCD (Windows 7) or boot.ini(XP).

You can use mountvol.exe on command line to mount any partition (even the active/system partition) and then you can display contents with dir command.

dir  /ahs - displays hidden, system files.

copy   driveX:\file_source.ext    driveY:\file_destination.ext   -     copies one file from driveX to driveY for example.

Same can be done with explorer when display of hidden / system files is enabled.

In you case you have to copy the files boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com from your "old" active partition to SSD, active partition.

To mark a partition (on any disk) as active you can use Disk Management.

Eventually the contents of boot.ini has to be updated - use ArcPaths utility to display correct ARC path for XP drive and change boot.ini accordingly.

Hope this helps.

[bubba]

Thanks, I thought that is what you meant, but I didn't want to crash the Win7 install..I will give it a try, I already updated the boot.ini for the partition location.