Crow said:
Would just reinstalling XP solve the problem? Does windows 7 a boot.ini
file or something along those lines. Back in the day I remember all you
had to do was put a few lines of code into one of the boot up ini files
and thing would work ok? Or I'm thinking of something else?? I did the
bootsect fix but probably overwrote/eliminated any hope of recovering my
original MBR. I'll look up the BCDedit command...
I don't think you've done any permanent damage.
Try booting your Windows 7 DVD, and see if there is a repair option
there. (One that automatically tries bootsect or bootrec and so on.)
This is an example of that kind of advice. I would hope, at the
very least, this gets Windows 7 working. (Windows 8 and Vista are
similar designs, and both are based on BCD rather than boot.ini.)
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-19411_102-343514.html
"Insert your Vista DVD, restart your computer, and press any key to boot
from CD/DVD when prompted. Once the Windows Vista installer launches
proceed through the keyboard/language selection and, instead of clicking
Install Now, choose "Repair my Computer" from the bottom left corner.
Finally, choose the Startup Repair option and restart your computer once
it completes. That should automatically detect both operating systems
and reset the boot options."
For that to work, you should see a menu at some point, to select
the partition to fix. And the repair option, should only
list your Windows 7 partition at that time.
Windows 7 stores boot information in BCD, rather than boot.ini.
The tool BCDEDIT is used to make modifications, such as add
a second OS to the boot menu. A third party tool EasyBCD is also
available, and doesn't have quite the learning curve, of using
BCDEDIT.
If you install Windows XP, after Windows 7, the Windows XP installer
doesn't know what Windows 7 is. Windows XP cannot "add" Windows 7 to
its boot menu. So I don't see a positive result from that approach.
The closest to a "correct install order", would be Windows XP, followed
by Windows 7 as a dual boot. And then, the Windows 7 installer should
see the WinXP partition and add an entry for it. The MBR would contain
a Windows 7 chunk of code. The Windows 7 boot partition would be the
active one. And a Windows 7 boot loading sequence should take place,
until the boot menu can show up on the screen.
What I do here, is install one OS per disk and use two disks. Then,
I press F8 at power up, and use the BIOS popup boot menu, to select
the OS I want to use. The benefit of doing it that way, is I can
unplug either drive, and the OSes are independent of one another.
If you install two OSes on a single drive, and multi-boot, then
part of the fun is what happens if you remove one of the OSes. If
you remove the OS which is providing the boot menu, there might be
a bit more work to clean up afterwards. Of course, on your
typical laptop, you don't have the luxury of using an approach
like that. My laptop only has the one hard drive, and if I wanted
two OSes, is would be loads of "fun" setting it up.
Best guess,
Paul