Originally I had XP and 7 installed on a dual-boot. while away from the house for a few days, the roommates managed to destroy the MBR one way or another. When the comp was turned on it would sit with no monitor output and no BIOS operation. i pulled the power supply as well as the CMOS battery for 5 mins. when power was restored, BIOS came up and things were good to go. the next problem was that the comp told me that i didn't have a boot diskette installed and to insert and press any key to continue. i tried to run the win 7 boot disk and run a repair but the repair module couldn't find the install of win 7 to fix. i then ran the xp boot disk and ran a repair. i was able to get the comp to boot into xp and found out that all of my files and folders were still on the comp and that no important information was gone that i could find. when win xp finished the repair, i was back at a basic win install with no desktop shortcuts or any of my programs registering that they had ever been installed though i was able to find all folders and save items. i then restarted the comp and ran the 7 boot disk again and ran the repair module, this time through it found the win 7 install. it took 4 times of restarting and re-running the repair module before i was finally able to get win 7 to boot properly back to the way it originally was with all programs, desktop and visual setting still set the way i had them. i have still been unable to get my win xp boot to come up on the boot menu at the startup on the comp and the boot option in control panel of win 7 does not show that xp exists. each time i want to run either win system, i have to run the repair module and when doing so in xp, i always lose all my settings and have to start over fresh. any assistance in this matter would be much appreciated due to the fact that a lot of my programs are incompatible in 7 such as games that require openGL graphics. Thanks much
Right on thanks for the help on that guys i was really hoping not to have to go through the whole process of re-formatting. i'm sure we all know how fun that can be... i will look into that program and give you an update in a bit
Sanjeet & Salil Rane, i used the program you suggested, changed a few options around, deleted the original win 7 MBR and re-wrote it with the new one. i was then easily able to boot into win xp. i then followed through a couple more ideas through sanjeet about re-booting into win 7 (using any method necessary) and ran the repair module on the cd. the next time the comp restarted, it had both of my windows systems listed properly. i booted into 7 and am using it now. i will be double checking the win xp version again in a few mins. thanks again for all the help i am so glad to finally have my system setup properly
Darknight, there are just some programs that need win xp. besides that, if i setup a virtual machine, it would be in such a way as to allow me to run both windows systems at once, completely and efficiently (xp being the main boot system and 7 in the secondary VM). i also don't want to download a 500 mb program to do something that the windows system does best, running it's own system if that makes any sense.
i will consider the xp mode in win 7, i have to wait for comcast on monday either way (qwest just doesn't cut it). in the mean time, i have one other issue in win 7; i used BCDEdit and was able to correct the dual-boot, in the process i marked a box in "advanced" that implied that it would disable "non-digital signature protection". ever since then, i can't get my drivers to work either on a regular boot or by special mode menu boot. any assistance would be awesome
i was able to successfully cure my dual-boot issue and both windows systems run efficiently and error free i am currently downloading the windows xp compatibility system (qwest takes forever... can't wait for comcast on monday) and will let you know how that pans out. thanks for the advice and help that everyone has provided.
