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Multi Boot problems

M

Mike K

Flightless Bird
Oh Wise Ones,
My Dell came with Vista (dual 320GB drives). I partitioned
50GB for Windows 7. Dual boot- no problems. Then I added an additional 1.5TB
drive for XP (for legacy games) . I partitioned the whole 1.5TB for XP and
installed my XP Pro. Now when I boot, it boots up directly into XP. So I
figured I needed a seperate boot manager. I installed a manager and it sees
my other drives/os's. But when I selected either one of them for bootup, I
got a MBR missing error. What am I missing? The other drives appear
untouched, read and write capable, but not bootable.

Thanks,
Mike
 
P

philo

Flightless Bird
On 07/14/2010 04:47 AM, Mike K wrote:
> Oh Wise Ones,
> My Dell came with Vista (dual 320GB drives). I partitioned
> 50GB for Windows 7. Dual boot- no problems. Then I added an additional 1.5TB
> drive for XP (for legacy games) . I partitioned the whole 1.5TB for XP and
> installed my XP Pro. Now when I boot, it boots up directly into XP. So I
> figured I needed a seperate boot manager. I installed a manager and it sees
> my other drives/os's. But when I selected either one of them for bootup, I
> got a MBR missing error. What am I missing? The other drives appear
> untouched, read and write capable, but not bootable.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike




http://www.heiser.net/posts/3256
 
A

Al

Flightless Bird
Mike - number one rule - always install the "earliest" Windows
version first - in your case order would be -XP, Vista, Win 7.

Google or Bing for "VistaBootPro" - an utility that will provide a
solution.

BTW - consider Windows Virtual PC and Win XP Mode for Win 7.
 
J

Jerry

Flightless Bird
Download EasyBCD2 - it will help you solve your problems.

"Mike K" <MikeK@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8CE693FC-CC82-4296-A263-C6802ABB72C0@microsoft.com...
> Oh Wise Ones,
> My Dell came with Vista (dual 320GB drives). I partitioned
> 50GB for Windows 7. Dual boot- no problems. Then I added an additional
> 1.5TB
> drive for XP (for legacy games) . I partitioned the whole 1.5TB for XP and
> installed my XP Pro. Now when I boot, it boots up directly into XP. So I
> figured I needed a seperate boot manager. I installed a manager and it
> sees
> my other drives/os's. But when I selected either one of them for bootup, I
> got a MBR missing error. What am I missing? The other drives appear
> untouched, read and write capable, but not bootable.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
 
A

Andy

Flightless Bird
Assuming you didn't change the boot drive when you installed the 1.5TB
drive (this means the motherboard Bios still boots from the same 320GB
drive), when you installed XP, Windows setup wrote the XP boot sector
on the 320GB drive containing the Windows system partition. This
causes booting directly into XP.
What you should have done after installing XP was rewrite the boot
sector with the one for Windows 7 that runs boot manager instead of
XP's ntldr. The command to do this is bootsect.exe which comes with
Windows 7. Changing the boot sector will cause booting into Windows 7.
Then use the command bcdedit to add XP's ntldr to Windows 7 boot
manager BCD to enable dual boot.

On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:47:36 -0700, Mike K
<MikeK@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>Oh Wise Ones,
> My Dell came with Vista (dual 320GB drives). I partitioned
>50GB for Windows 7. Dual boot- no problems. Then I added an additional 1.5TB
>drive for XP (for legacy games) . I partitioned the whole 1.5TB for XP and
>installed my XP Pro. Now when I boot, it boots up directly into XP. So I
>figured I needed a seperate boot manager. I installed a manager and it sees
>my other drives/os's. But when I selected either one of them for bootup, I
>got a MBR missing error. What am I missing? The other drives appear
>untouched, read and write capable, but not bootable.
>
>Thanks,
> Mike
 
I

ichase@thepostoffice.co.uk

Flightless Bird
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:03:34 -0400, just as I was about to take a
herb, "Al" <ajrjdr@comcast.net> disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Mike - number one rule - always install the "earliest" Windows
>version first - in your case order would be -XP, Vista, Win 7.


No, fist rule is to buy some decent software to make your life easier
so you don't have to bother installing in ANY order.
 
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