[Pezzy]

OK...........

I edited EasyBCD and chose "C:\" drive as the start point. I rebooted, got to the screen where I can choose the OS, and I selected Win XP, and when I did, I did NOT get the error message this time of "ntldr" not found. But....

After selecting Win XP, the screen temporarily goes black, and then I'm back at my BIOS flash screen.............and I thought for a second there that it was going to go from there to the Win XP OS........but then I'm back at the "choose OS" screen. So for now I chose Win 7 and here I am.

Check out this screen shot from my Computer:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...stemDrives.jpg

And then here's the shot you requested of my Disk Management screen:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...DiskManage.jpg

The one that's just the "C" drive is where Win 7 is. The one that's labeled "C(E)" is where Win XP is, and then you'll also notice one labeled "D(F)". When I just had the one SATA drive in my system running Win XP, I had the drive partitioned and formatted into two drives, a "C" and a "D". "C", of course, was the primary partion, and where the OS of XP was. The "D" drive I used for storing stuff.

And just to let you know, for the heck of it, I tried editing EasyBCD again and choosing "E" for the starting point. But the same thing happened as with "C" as the starting point (it gets to the choose OS screen.....I choose Win XP......no error for the "ntldr" file.....but the computer just reboots back around to the choose OS screen.......).

Well, at least it's not getting the "ntldr" error anymore, so it must be finding that. But is something not "pointing" in the right direction? Can you glean anything from the screenshots I provided?

Are we getting close? :nerd:

Thanks!
Pez

[Mak213]

Alright show the system files again so you can edit the boot.ini file. From there make sure that it reads:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Then save the boot.ini file and try again.

[Pezzy]

Hi Mak; sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Well, I went to that boot.ini file like you said while I was booted into Windows 7. I edited that line you said with "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Wind ows XP Professional" /fastdetect", but when I tried to save the changes, it wouldn't let me.

I've noticed things similar to this since checking out this recent install of Windows 7. When I try to copy something, edit, etc., I sometimes get a message that pops up telling me I can't do it, but, on this same message pop up is a button that says "Continue", and if I click it, it usually lets me go ahead anyway.

I guess it's like an "Administrator's Rights" thing, but, the thing is, on my Windows XP installation - as well as this Windows 7 installation - I do have Administrator's Rights. When I do a fresh installation of an OS, I don't set up "Multiple User" names, nor do I set a password. This way when I boot the computer up, it can just go right to my desktop and I don't have to "login". I'm guessing there are others that do this also.

Anyway, trying to edit this boot.ini file seemed to be an exception. No matter what I tried while in the Windows 7 environment would let me edit & save changes. I had wanted to see if my Win XP was still going to boot properly anyway, so I shut down, switched the connections of the two SATA drives on my motherboard so the Win XP would boot first. It booted fine, so while in there, I navigated over to the drive that had Win 7 on it, found the boot.ini file, and now I was able to edit it and save the changes.

Once more I switched connections on my motherboard, booted, got to the "choose OS" screen, selected Win XP (did not get the ntldr error), screen goes black......but then it cycled back around to the "choose OS" screen.

So here I am back in the Win 7 environment.

Since I was finally able to edit the boot.ini file while I was back in my Win XP environment, should I try going back into EasyBCD and for the Win XP settings try pointing it again to "E" instead of "C"? Or is "C" the only proper way to go?

Dang....I thought this dual-boot thingy would be easier than this

What do you think?
Pez

[Mak213]

Alright your issue is you dont have ownership. Check the Read First topic. I have a article in there about it.

After that you should be able to edit and save.

[Pezzy]

Hi Mak.

Ownership, eh? Is this like Administrator rights?

I went to the Windows Operating Systems and Software page and clicked on the sticky link of "READ FIRST". So I just want to be sure here.......

Which sticky is it:

How to take ownership of files in Vista

or

Admin Rights in Vista/Windows 7

Which one???!

I hope one of these does it for me.

Thanks!!!!
Pez

[Mak213]

How to take Ownership. That is the topic you need.

[Pezzy]

Mak:

The company that makes that EasyBCD program.....I didn't realize that they had a forum of their own. I went over there and posted, and boy......what I found out!

It turns out that when Windows 7 installed onto my SATA drive, that it created a partition that it didn't name and was "blank"; it's the "system" drive, automatically gets created by Win 7 to be 200MB, and this was where I needed to put those boot.ini, NTDETECT, & NTLDR files. And since it was "blank" and not named, I had to give it a name, so, I labeled it "B".

I copied the needed files over to this "B", used the latest version of EasyBCD (version 2.0, which also has a nice feature of writing to that boot.ini file if you'd like), and then.......re-boot......and now when I get to the "choose OS" screen and select Win XP....it works :-)

Thanks again for all of your input, Mak. I learn new things every time I post here with you. You're a great help.
Pez

[Mak213]

Win7 by default should not just create that partition. I have not had that come about. I knew of it but did not think it applied.

But i should have realized this once you said you installed it to a blank spare hard drive. I know that Win7 does this on a blank drive and i should have realized it sooner. I am sorry about that. Completely slipped my mind.

Glad you got it sorted now.