Windows 7 and XP dual boot - invalid boot.ini !?

Hi

I got windows 7 running fine for a while now and ever since my XP did not boot anymore.I was not worried to much about it since i did not need it at the time.But now i really REALY need it,See i got all my Cubase projects in there and my cubase plug-ins al setup in XP and i need to get to the projects :*( Cry!!

At first it did not do anything and using easyBCD did not help either.I cpoied ntldr and detect to the root of C: wich contains my XP and now it shows the bootscreen but hangs on a black screen.The thing is right before the bootscreen shows i see the text" invalid boot.ini" flashing by very quick.

I am able to enter that winXP install in safe mode and i tried safe/vga mode as well wich works but thats all.

Anyone have any idea how to fix this withouth destroying the XP install ?

Bump*

anyone?

I still have not found a solution myself and i really need one.Re-installing the XP install is not really a option for me
So if anyone has a few ideas for me to try it would be very much apreciated.

Originally Posted by D-vious

Hi

I got windows 7 running fine for a while now and ever since my XP did not boot anymore.I was not worried to much about it since i did not need it at the time.But now i really REALY need it,See i got all my Cubase projects in there and my cubase plug-ins al setup in XP and i need to get to the projects :*( Cry!!

At first it did not do anything and using easyBCD did not help either.I cpoied ntldr and detect to the root of C: wich contains my XP and now it shows the bootscreen but hangs on a black screen.The thing is right before the bootscreen shows i see the text" invalid boot.ini" flashing by very quick.

I am able to enter that winXP install in safe mode and i tried safe/vga mode as well wich works but thats all.

Anyone have any idea how to fix this withouth destroying the XP install ?

what did you have on which partition and what was the order you installed everything ?

Thank you for the reply ickmay.


I had winXP running at first and Winvista.I formated the Vista partition during Win7's install.

I have dedicated partitions for both winXP and Win7 ,they are even on seperate drives.I may have installed a few programs to the c: drives ofcourse but thats it really.

The boot is automated when you install Win7 in a separate partition. It will make Win7 the default, meaning it will start it up after 30 seconds unless you hit enter to start it sooner, or unless you move to the other OS listed in the boot menu by using your arrow key and then hitting return. It is not clear from your post whether you are getting a boot menu with these 2 (or more) choices, but that is how you work them if you do.

You can change the boot default by right clicking on Computer and choosing Properties>Advanced Settings>Startup and making sure both operating systems are listed in the dropdown menu and the correct one is set to default, and the default timeout is where you want it. If they are not both listed, or incorrectly labeled, I use Vista Boot Pro 3.3. trial to Manage or relabel them. It is easy to mess up if you don't study it carefully.

A manual way to get both o.s.'s to show up correctly is found by googling the tutorial How to dual-boot Vista with XP (with XP installed first) since Vista boots almost identically to Vista. To get the best results, You need to install the o.s. in order of age, however there is also a tutorial by the same source on how to do the reverse.

If you want to avoid risk altogether then use the Disk Management function by right clicking Computer>Manage, delete the second partition, create a new volume in that space, format and reinstall Win7 from disk. There is no reason it should not install correctly as the default top listing in your boot menu once you restart. You may have installed it wrong to begin with.

Have a quick look at this thread. It will give you an insight of what to repair.
Windows 7 boot.ini file

Thanks for the link dave but in my case it seems to be a bit more complicated.

Gregrocker:

My firts post may have been confusing.Here is a breakdown:

1. I had XP and Vista on 2 seprate drives with a sucsesfull dualboot.
2. I formated the Vista drive/partition wduring a windows 7 install.Since then i have not had XP working.

3. Booting XP resulted in a instant error message 0xx0000 until i copied NTDETECT and NTLDR to XP's Root,Once i had done this i got the windows bootscreen but that ended up in a black screen just hanging there.Before the bootscreen shows up i see "invalid boot.ini c:\windows" flash by real quick tho.
i am able to enter the WinXP install in safemode.

That is basicly my problem right now.I just tried using the repair console and ran fixboot on the XP partition but no result.
One thing that did spring to mind when i did that is that i had used a stardock program to alter my bootscreen on that XP it might have something to do with it but im not sure.


I am a bit afraid to use the Fixmbr command since it warns me that it might cause the drives partitions to become inaccesible.


Help !! :*(

And do you have the files I mentioned in the other hread all present. They have to be. Also, it is possible you may have to manually edit your boot.ini

The bootsect command can be found on either the Windows Vista or Windows7 Beta DVD in the Boot folder. The first thing you need in order to perform this procedure is the appropriate DVD.

Running Bootsect:

You can launch the Bootsect command from a Command Prompt or by using the Run command. Since the latter is quicker, just press [Windows]+R to open the run dialog box. When the Run dialog box appears, type the following command line in the Open text box:

X:\Boot\Bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force

For example, if the DVD drive letter is D: you Run dialog box will look like this:

D:\Boot\Bootsect.exe /nt52 All /force

When you click OK, you'll momentarily see a Command Prompt window, and the operation will instantly remove the Windows Boot Manager system and its Boot Configuration Data from the boot partition. At this point remove the DVD from the drive, and you can then restart the system.

When the system restarts, you'll see that the Windows Boot Manager no longer appears and the system boots directly into XP.

Now that the Vista or Windows7Beta Windows Boot Manager is removed from yur XP system, you can use partition software to reformat the second partition, merge if back into the first partition, set up another dual boot configuration or use if some other way.

Dave: Sorry i did not check that earlier.I dont seem to have all files there.

I cant seem to find these on any of my drives in the root:
Autoexec.bat
Config.sys
IO.sys
Msdos.sys

I also could not find the boot ini at first so i searched my drives and found a bootini.backup wich i renamed to boot.ini and placed them in the root of both os'es since it did not work by just placing them on just the XP drive (not that it worked after placing them on the root of the win7 install but it was worth a try)


@Greenarrow

thank you greenarrow but selecting and starting the XP install is not the problem.as i said i can select XP and try to boot and i am able to boot into it in safemode.I already removed the win7 boot using Easybcd but it had the same effect with the only difference being that i could no longer select win7 at startup.