How to recover the Win7 and Win XP dual-boot? by Tangfeng Chen

Before I tell you the solutions, let me tell you the case that I met in this morning. I first installed Windows XP on the hard disk C, then I installed Win 7 on hard disk D. It works well because I have backed up the XP system. As long as I ghosted the disk C, the problem appeared. There are only Windows XP and Ghost items on System Start. I have no idea of how to visit Win7. So I spent almost all the morning to solve this problem out.

Let me tell you something about some Startup theory on Windows XP and Win 7, and how can we deal with dual start.

In windows7&XP dual system, Win7 uses bootmgr piping systems startup mode. As long as the computer finishes self-test, it will search for the active primary partition (usually disk C) and load it. Then the computer will continue reading the startup-config (that is C:\BOOT\BCD) and c:\boot.ini under the active partition. According to the stored start-up information on BCD and Boot.ini, the computer will list out the Start menus ( dual-system start-up menu). It will also list out the Microsoft Windows 7 and the old version of Windows for the dual-system user.


If you choose the former, Bootmgr will set the control power to Winload.exe (under \windows\systems) and then start up the Windows 7. If you choose the latter, Bootmgr will set the control power to NTLDR, and then start to read c:\boot.ini and list out the startup menu. The startup failure mainly occurs at Bootmgr Bootmgr、BCD、Winload.exe、Ntldr.

Now let's solve this problem out.

First of all, we need several backup files such as bootmgr, ntldt,bcd, bootsect. If you have the Windows 7 system disk, you can directly get them from it. There is another tool called EasyBCD.

Note: In order to run the EasyBCD on Windows XP, the supported system is Microsoft .NET Framework2.0

The following instructions are carried out on Windows XP. If there are any hidden files and system files, you'd better to display them. Please copy bootmgr,ntldt to disk C and copy bcd,bootsect to C:\boot\, then run EasyBCD. Please switch to the left "ADD/Remove Entries", choose the previously invalid startup menus from left windows, click Delete and add the startup menus under "Add An Entry". Please choose "Windows NT/200/XP" from Version to add the XP startup menus, set the save path as disk C and named it as Windows XP. Please choose Windows Vista/longhom from Version to add Win7 startip menus and choose disk D as the save path and named it as Windows 7. Finally click ADD Entry to save the settings.

Until now, please open Start and input cmd, go on C:\boot\ and input "bootsect /nt60 C：", restart your PC, the problem has been done.