Member Avatar for ronCYA

Hey all,

I originally had a dual boot of Windows 7 and XP on two seperate drives. Windows 7 being the main one I used, I decided to format and reinstall XP since it had become bloated and messy.

All that worked fine, but now all I can boot into is XP. Instead of giving me 30 seconds to choose which OS I want to boot into like it used to, it now just boots straight into XP. Specifically choosing the drive with Windows 7 installed just ends up booting into XP anyway.

When I look at the drive with 7 installed in XP, everything is still intact on the drive. The only problem is that the BIOS won't recognise the OS on the drive for me to boot into.

Any help or ideas what might cause this would be great. Thanks in advance.

Edited by ronCYA because: n/a
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Member Avatar for mabpest

Hey all,

I originally had a dual boot of Windows 7 and XP on two seperate drives. Windows 7 being the main one I used, I decided to format and reinstall XP since it had become bloated and messy.

All that worked fine, but now all I can boot into is XP. Instead of giving me 30 seconds to choose which OS I want to boot into like it used to, it now just boots straight into XP. Specifically choosing the drive with Windows 7 installed just ends up booting into XP anyway.

When I look at the drive with 7 installed in XP, everything is still intact on the drive. The only problem is that the BIOS won't recognise the OS on the drive for me to boot into.

Any help or ideas what might cause this would be great. Thanks in advance.

Trying formatting and installing xp from scratch and then install win 7. Win 7 will save your xp in a folder called windows .old

Member Avatar for ronCYA

Right now XP is on an entirely seperate drive. Why does installing Windows 7 put all of that in another folder?

Member Avatar for mabpest

Right now XP is on an entirely seperate drive. Why does installing Windows 7 put all of that in another folder?

Win 7 is designed that way,,your other option is to use virtual box or virtual pc and install xp into one of those after you install win 7 as your primary OS.

Member Avatar for altuin

If you do not want to reinstall both operating systems again (XP first and then Win 7) you can try using EasyBCD which will repair your boot manager. If you install and run it from XP you should also install the .net framework as it is required by EasyBCD.

Member Avatar for ronCYA

Oh alright then, sorry. I did that before (install XP, then 7) and XP remained on the other drive instead of in some folder, so I wasn't sure.

Is there a way to make the BIOS recognise Win 7 on the other drive? Because everything is intact, it just won't get recognised.

Member Avatar for ronCYA

If you do not want to reinstall both operating systems again (XP first and then Win 7) you can try using EasyBCD which will repair your boot manager. If you install and run it from XP you should also install the .net framework as it is required by EasyBCD.

Okay, looks like I'll be giving this a shot if there isn't another way.

Member Avatar for ronCYA

Sorry to bump, but just letting you know this worked.

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