Windows 7 / XP Dual booting problems

Hey, I recently got the new RC off Microsoft installing alongside a relatively new XP Pro installation.

I have two 320gb SATA HDs that I'm working off right now, the two operating systems are on different hard drives. After installing Windows 7 I did not get a dual boot option like most guides said I would. I downloaded easyBCD and attempted to add the entry in there manually:

Windows 7 sees my old XP partition as E, so i put that in there.. Currently the entry in easyBCD shows..

Entry #2
Name: Microsoft Windows XP
BCD ID: {1a31edef-5218-11de-85f2-c3ab03279010}
Drive: E:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR


Yet when I select it at boot there is an error saying NTLDR is not found etc. I can boot back into 7 fine.

Update: I remembered afterwards that windows XP put its system stuff on a different partition on that drive. I located which letter it was in Windows 7 and changed it to that. However now when I select that option in the boot menu my computer just restarts from that point on.

New Update: Went into system restore on the Windows 7 cd. It notices that there is a Windows 7 system there but not the windows XP. I believe this may be the cause for it not setting up the dual boot stuff automatically. It tells me that if the system isn't found there to click 'Load Drivers' and find the drivers for the hard drive containing the partition. Funny thing is, when I search for the drivers, the other hard drive's partitions, and even the old Windows XP boot/system partitions are available for searching. This leads me to believe the reason for prior issues with everything is the fact that the installation of Windows XP decided to install its bootloader stuff on a seperate partition.. I am not sure for the reason of this at all, in fact I think windows 7 decided to do it as well.. I'll be double checking that when I'm done writing this.

Dual booting with XP is possible, I have XP and Win 7 RC 32-bit running on an older Gateway. The problem is that XP is not compatible with the Vista/Win 7 boot managers without some tweaking. The EasyBCD site has a step-by-step guide in their FAQ to make an entry for XP, but it involves copying the boot folder contents intact from a legitimate Vista installation (or from the Win 7 installation) into XP. Read up on their instructions and try that. Good luck.

Hi there
one of the confusions over dual booting XP and W7 after installing W7 on a new partition from XP so you can dual boot is that the XP partition needs to be set ACTIVE . Just right mouse click on say VOLUME D and set the partition to ACTIVE.

This should fix your dual boot problems -- DO NOT USE REPAIR SYSTEM ON W7 OR YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO GET BACK EVER INTO BOOTING XP WITHOUT A LOT OF GRIEF AND PROBABLY WINDOWS XP RE_INSTALL

Boot up either system -- in your case it will be W7, go into control panel==>administrative tools==>computer management==> disk management

Here's a screen shot of a laptop I'm using with a dual boot XP and W7 system - the XP Partition (from W7 is Disk D whilst W7 is C)

System is booted into W7 for this example.

Cheers
jimbo

I just did this and now it says ''the windows boot configuration data file is missing required information''

File: Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc0000034