Windows 7 / XP Dual Boot Help

[Syndacate]

So I have 7 installed on partition 1, I installed XP on partition 3.

I'm aware (and expected) the MBR to be overwritten and that Win7 would be temporarily offline until I repaired the MBR, then added XP back to the list.

So I did that, it finished installing, it booted into XP, then I go to the drive letter assignments manager (right click my computer >> manage >> disk management) and I have a problem. My Win7 partition (1), was marked as "C:" and it says "boot", my partition 3 (where I wanted ALL of XP installed) is marked as "E:" and says "system".

Okay, not entirely sure why in the fuck XP decided to randomly use another partition, but how do I fix it? I stumbled upon some MSDN article saying to use regedit to rename the drive letters, but that rendered XP unbootable. I can reinstall it now, but I'm guessing the problem will occur again.

How do I tell the XP installer that I want ALL of XP on that partition - or merge the system and boot files onto the one partition after installation?

Kinda jammed up here, kinda need my computer un-fucked quick, any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[dbwillis]

Guessing XP saw the W7 install as C, then your CDRom as D and used the next drive letter.
When Ive done a dual boot, Ive done seperate installs of W7 and XP to different drives, one at a time (so only C (HDD) and D (CDRom) ) are seen, then used EasyBCD to add the XP to the boot list.

 

[Syndacate]

Guessing XP saw the W7 install as C, then your CDRom as D and used the next drive letter.
When Ive done a dual boot, Ive done seperate installs of W7 and XP to different drives, one at a time (so only C (HDD) and D (CDRom) ) are seen, then used EasyBCD to add the XP to the boot list.

I really don't care what drive letter it installs to, installing to E: is just fine with me.

My problem is that it separated the boot and the system partitions. I am UNABLE to unmount the C: drive (partition 1) from the disk management utility, and that's because that's marked as the boot partition (says "(boot)" on C, I need to "merge" the "boot" onto the "system" (partition 3) so that everything is on one partition, and I can unmount partition 1.

XP should be able to exist solely on one partition, right now it is unable to, it requires partition 1 for boot, and partition 3 for system.

If separate drives was possible I would do it, but at the present time different drives is not.

 

[Syndacate]

I made a mistake earlier.

C: (partition 1) (where Windows 7 resides) is what XP is claiming is its system drive, E: (partition 3, where I told it to install to) is where it says the boot sector/partition resides.

Arg, this is retarded, I told it to install on partition 3, it should install on partition 3.

 

[Exavior]

The Windows 7 drive contains the boot loader so that will show up as the boot drive, your e drive will show up at the system as that is where the OS is. That is odd that it decided to change the drive letter like that, they all should install themselves as c and not care what letters the other OS is using. do you know what changes you made? can you open the registry files and change them back? might also be able to restore the registry from a system restore point if you have any.

 

[bigdogchris]

This is not difficult to set up.

Install XP first on partition 3, Then install 7 on partition 1. It should automatically detect and create your boot manager. If it doesn't, use Easy BCD. The easiest way though is to use two hard drives. Install one OS on one, then unhook it and install the other OS on the other. Hook both back up and boot to the 7 hard drive, then use easy BCD to create a boot manager.

 

[mngl1500]

This is not difficult to set up.

Install XP first on partition 3, Then install 7 on partition 1. It should automatically detect and create your boot manager. If it doesn't, use Easy BCD. The easiest way though is to use two hard drives. Install one OS on one, then unhook it and install the other OS on the other. Hook both back up and boot to the 7 hard drive, then use easy BCD to create a boot manager.

Or if your motherboard allows pressing a key for a boot option to choose what drive to boot from. This is what I use.

 

[Syndacate]

The Windows 7 drive contains the boot loader so that will show up as the boot drive, your e drive will show up at the system as that is where the OS is. That is odd that it decided to change the drive letter like that, they all should install themselves as c and not care what letters the other OS is using. do you know what changes you made? can you open the registry files and change them back? might also be able to restore the registry from a system restore point if you have any.

I was able to use the win7 repair disc to remotely load the XP registry hive I modified, modified it back, and XP boots now. Not sure about that stupid MS tech article, followed it twice, both resulted in XP not able to boot.

As to why it's using "E" - it's because it's being installed to the 3rd partition. So I don't think it's being affected by the Win7 install as much as it is the physical location. Why it didn't choose C though is still annoying, not many people have Windows as NOT the first partition.

Furthermore, the letter doesn't piss me off as much as the fact that it decided to split important things. It put the boot stuff on partition 1, marked that as 'C', and called that 'system' -> then everything else (Windows, Program Files, etc.) was on partition 3, which it marked as 'E', and marked as the 'boot' partition.

I had requested it be installed to partition 3.

This is not difficult to set up.

Install XP first on partition 3, Then install 7 on partition 1. It should automatically detect and create your boot manager. If it doesn't, use Easy BCD. The easiest way though is to use two hard drives. Install one OS on one, then unhook it and install the other OS on the other. Hook both back up and boot to the 7 hard drive, then use easy BCD to create a boot manager.

Appreciate the condescending tone, but there's more to it than that.

You're right, IF I had the luxury of being at a point to re-install both OS's, this is not hard to do...but I don't have that luxury.

So, XP had to be installed with Win7 already installed. Obviously this is easy as hell if neither is installed, but Win7 was installed and that couldn't be re-installed at the time for a few reasons. Read the OP before you respond, please.

Or if your motherboard allows pressing a key for a boot option to choose what drive to boot from. This is what I use.

Yes, again, if you read the posts, if I had the luxury of using a second HDD, I wouldn't have a problem putting it on a second drive, but I don't.

- I didn't have the luxury of a second HDD to put it on
- I didn't have the luxury of reinstall Win7

*************
How I fixed this clusterfuck
*************

- I reinstalled XP to make it bootable, this made XP boot always, obviously, as the MBR was overwritten with the NT loader.
- I merged the partitions by moving "ntdlr", "NTDETECT.COM", and "boot.ini" from partition 1 to partition 3, I then put them into a folder in partition 1 to prevent them from being scanned
- I rebooted, and Win7 wouldn't load, neither would XP - but whatever, I put that on pause for now
- I put in the Win7 CD -> repair -> command line -> I used diskpart to make the 3rd partition active, after that, XP booted
- I then used the instructions here to repair/rebuild the BCD, then Win7 was booted, and I knew WinXP was bootable, and could be added to BCD with a program..but I didn't. (Note: These instructions did NOT work for restoring the Win7 BCD)
- The reason I didn't is because the 2nd part has a Linux distro on it, so I booted into that using a live disk, binded to my 2nd partition, installed and updated grub 2.
- Now, upon rebooting, WinXP, Win7, and the Linux distro were all available from the Grub kernel chooser, and all worked
- Next I attempted to fix the drive letter issue in XP, so I followed the instructions here, again (2nd time), and again, for the second time, rendered XP un-bootable. Not sure why..
- So I decided that I'm not going through everything again, and I need to fix the registry remotely
- After countless PE tools I had laying around, and s a *nix based registry editor for which I couldn't figure out how to rename values, I figured out that regedit was on the live CD
- I loaded Win7 install, chose 'repair' - opened regedit. File >> load hive >> part3/Windows/system32/system >> with the hive opened it prompts for a key to modify, I chose "MountedDevices" and hit enter >> I then went to the key DIRECTLY under LOCAL_SYSTEM (as the one under system is with regards to the CD, and it can't be modified) and modified the value names >> then I clicked on HKLS >> file >> unload hive.
- I rebooted, and that was that. XP still has the drive letter "E" - but everything is on that now (partition 3).

3 things:
1. It all being on E:\ IS a bit of a problem, despite people telling you it's not. This is because SW devs suck (I know, I am one), many hardcode C:\ as the root, instead of %systemroot% or whatever the hell it is (I'm not a Windows dev, I don't know off-hand). So not everything will work correctly when it comes to setting up drivers/programs...but for the most part, these issues should be few and far between.

2. I'm still open to some root changes, depending on what it is, but it may not be worth it as I install more stuff on XP.

3. From me starting this to getting it where it is was approximately 8 hours without a break at any time to piss. There were lots of temporary set-backs, re-attempts, re-installs, etc. along the way. The steps above may only apply to 2 or 3 hours of my work, so, in case you're wondering about the gap, the steps above is the GENERAL process, not the entire step-by-step...it's about as close of a step-by-step as I can remember.

Thx for some attempts as help, post here if you have any questions about what I've done so I can elaborate or explain and others may benefit.