Cannot Dual Boot Windows 7 & Windows XP Home

[corndale]

I installed Windows 7 beta on a 2nd HDD on my Windows XP Home computer. The install went well and I had no trouble booting into Windows 7, accessing the web, installing a driver for my nVidia e-Ge-Force FX5200 video card and installing Norton 360 version 3 beta.  When I rebooted and selected Windows XP I got the following error: "File:\ntldr  Status 0x000000f  Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt."  I rebooted and ran the Recovery Console from the Windows XP CD and ran Fixmbr C: and Fixboot C:.  When I rebooted, I did not get the dual bootup option but went straight to Windows XP.  Windows XP is fine.  However, I cannot boot to Windows 7.  What options do I have to fix this problem.  I do not mind reinstalling Windows 7.  However, if I do so, how can I avoid this problem?

[Buffalo2102]

You can probably boot to Windows 7 fine by changing the boot order of your hard drives in your BIOS.  That is how I used to change between Vista and XP.

If you want to choose between the two OS's at startup you will need to use a boot manager.  Windows 7 has it's own boot manager and that is what you were using before you had the issue with XP.  Unfortunately, in restoring the XP (primary HDD) MBR, you have removed the instruction that informed the system to boot from the secondary HDD first and you aren't seeing the boot manager options anymore.

Try changing the boot order of your hard drives in the BIOS so that the Windos 7 drive boots first.  If you still don't get the boot manager options then try downloading EasyBCD, installing it in Windows 7 and then setting up the boot options.

[pat]

On my test system this is how the drives are arranged and the operating systems on them.
Drive 0  One partition Windows XP
Drive 1 Partitioned into two drives first partition is Vista second partition is Windows 7
Drive 2 Partitioned into 2 drives first partition is PC-BSD second partition is Ubuntu

I have Easy BCD installed on my Vista installation and that is what I used to manage my boot loader (Vista) which then lets me boot into the operating system I choose at startup.  When I installed Windows 7 it just added itself to the list of boot options, made it the default boot, but left the other entries intact and they all still work fine.

From what I have read, the Vista and Windows 7 boot loaders are very similar if not exactly the same and you may be able to just install Easy BCD in XP and then using the diagnostic part of the program to recreate the Windows 7 boot loader/boot manager.

See this FAQ and substitute Windows 7 for Vista.

Now this may work and then again it may not, suggest a backup of important files from XP first.

Also the Read Me from the Easy BCD support forums.