Dual Boot After Effects : Windows 7 & Windows XP

bbthumbhealer

bbthumbhealer

Disciple
Hi TE'ians,

My problem is that i dual booted my laptop with Windows 7 & XP with XP already existing on D:\ . Then i loaded Windows 7 , the laptop booted in seven . then using EasyBCD 1.xx i loaded a new entry of XP pointing to D:\. After this whenever i try to boot into XP at the boot manager , i get the error 'ntldr is missing' . I tried replacing the files by copying new ones from the XP Recovery console,but in vain.

So now what's the way out ? Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation.
BBThumbHealer :)
 
I used to face same problem.

Then what i did was to install win7 first and xp later.

And it worked perfectly :)

There might be other solutions but i know only this one :P
 
Are you able to boot into Seven..? I assume you are not able to boot into XP only. If that is the case, boot into Seven, open easyBCD, and edit the XP entry to point it to C:\. It should work.
 
i think your XP is installed on 1st drive as per MBR and Partition tables regardless of drive letters.

please confirm where which OS is installed with respect to Partition tables rather than the drive letters.

alternatively if you want to experiment, in EasyBCD, change the drive letter to C: for XP. If XP is indeed installed on 1st partition then it shall resolve the issue none the less...
 
You already have xp installed in D. Then did you install 7 by booting through 7 DVD ?. If you have done so its wrong. You should have initiated the 7 setup process from within xp. Ok. Past is past. now use a good utility called vistaboot pro in windows 7 which can add the xp entry to the windows 7 bootloader. Its very simple....
 
I dont know why you guys are having problems but I installed Win 7 after Win XP and faced no problems.
I have read on many forums that if you put Win 7 first, you cant put Win XP later as the older Windows bootloader does not support the newer Win 7 bootloader. But the Win 7 bootloader is backward compatible with Win XP.
 
+1 for Madnav suggestion, this error meant that partition you specified in easy BCD is not correct. go to Disk management and see if win7 has created a special partition for you (around 100 MB), if so; point to that partition for your XP installation. Make sure you are checking it in disk management as it is hidden from explorer.
 
I am also thinking of going for dual boot of XP & 7

I already have XP in C drive & D is totally blank.

Should i not install the 7 in D drive as i already have the XP installed in C ?

do not want any problems which the OP is facing
 
hotshot05 said:
I dont know why you guys are having problems but I installed Win 7 after Win XP and faced no problems.
I have read on many forums that if you put Win 7 first, you cant put Win XP later as the older Windows bootloader does not support the newer Win 7 bootloader. But the Win 7 bootloader is backward compatible with Win XP.
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Rubbish. I had installed Windows 7 and then I installed Windows XP for DUal boot and it worked perfectly.
 
^ Actually both of you are right. You cannot install XP over Windows 7 (or Vista for that matter, the same way you cannot install Me/98 over XP) and expect everything to go fine and dandy, UNLESS (have patience :P), you use a software like EasyBCD or manually edit the boot configuration in Windows 7 to create an entry for XP.

@shravank30: Yes, you can go ahead and install Windows 7 on your D drive without any issues. But make sure you select the correct partition while installing and not install over XP installation partition. :)

For anyone still having doubts :P : A particular version of Windows only recognizes an older version for dual booting. For e.g., you can install Windows 7 over Windows Vista and XP without any issues. But, you cannot install XP over Windows 7 and dual boot without forcefully modifying the boot configuration ( using BCDEdit command or a software like BCDEdit which gives you a GUI to do the same).
 
wr8_utd said:
Rubbish. I had installed Windows 7 and then I installed Windows XP for DUal boot and it worked perfectly.
Click to expand...
Just because it did for you does not make other guy comment rubbish. Try to understand. What he said is very true
 
thnx`guys for ur support .. resolved the issue myself by using EasyBCD v2.00 . The previous version which i was using was for Vista's bootloader , nw downloaded a new build which was for Windows 7 and it sorted out the issue in regular manner.

And regarding dual boot , there won't be any problems if u install Windows 7 first and then XP , but issues will arise only when XP is installed after 7 as the bootloader is edited ,so u'll need a utility like EasyBCD or BootPro.

Thnx once again for all ur help.
 
bbthumbhealer said:
And regarding dual boot , there won't be any problems if u install Windows 7 first and then XP , but issues will arise only when XP is installed after 7 as the bootloader is edited ,so u'll need a utility like EasyBCD or BootPro.
Click to expand...
You probably meant otherwise but both your statements mean the same. :P

Windows 7 after XP ---> No issue

Windows XP after 7 ---> BCDEdit
 
^^ No he didn't, you may try to install win 7 64 over xp and there are fare chances that you have to use bcdedit to add an xp entry. I have noticed this on win7 32 bit too but just one time.
 
^ I'm sorry I never encountered such an error. And that is because such an error should not happen since the bootloader in Vista/7 has been designed so that it recognizes XP's boot entry. Calls it as "An earlier version of Windows".

I've gone through 30-40 dual boot installations ( I'm a systems engineer and I've been using Windows 7 since the beta stage, even done triple/quad booting with Linux/Mac OS ) and never encountered any issue when you install a newer Windows OS over an older one.

If you've encountered it once, it might be due to some other reason. I don't believe that there are "fair chances" that we'll face problems when we try to do this.
 
What you are saying is true as obviously the new boot loader is designed in this way. Last when I encountered this my XP was on some 3 or 4 th partition, I installed windows 7 64 on Ist partition after formatting it. It was expected that it will search all partitions for a bootable image but it did not. So yes it should work the way you stated but at times it do not and I have encountered them a couple of time.
 
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