NP550P7C help with bios settings?

Hi folks! Good to be back on this forum! I have an NP550P7C I was needing help with my bios settings? I had windows 7 installed on it already. I had some troubles with some software compatibility so I decided to shrink my partion to add a windows xp dualboot. Everything went off without a hitch but now I can only boot into windows xp. Am I missing something obvious this is my first time setting one up but I am fairly tech savvy and feel I did the process correctly? Thanks in advance.

 

When you installed WinXP, it wrote its own bootloader (NTLDR) to Win7's boot partition (because it was flagged as the Active partition). XP is older, and its bootloader doesn't know how to load Win7. The best way is always to install the older OS (XP) first and the newer (Win7) afterwards, since Win7's bootloader (BOOTMGR) does know how to boot WinXP. Of course you already had Win7 installed, so that wasn't an option.

If you had flagged the new partition Active before installing WinXP, its bootloader would have been written there, and you could have gone back to Win7 and added XP to its boot menu. Let's try and get to that:

The best fix is to boot your Win7 disc (or USB) and use the automatic repair option there to repair boot files. With some luck, it will pick up both the original WIn7 installation and the XP installation and add both to the boot menu.

If it doesn't do it automatically for you, open a Command Prompt from Windows Setup (Shift-F10) and use bootsect /nt60 SYS to manually write a WIn7 boot sector to the boot partition. This is assuming your original Win7 boot partition (the 100MB so-called MSR partition) is still flagged Active. Otherwise you will have to specify its drive letter: bootsect /nt60 <msrdrive:>. The original boot configuration (so-called BCD) should still be intact and picked up by the bootloader.

While in Command Prompt, use XCOPY to copy NTLDR and BOOT.INI from the Win7 MSR partition (the 100MB one) to the WinXP partition, then execute bootsect /nt52 <xpdrive:> which will write an XP bootsector to the WinXP partition.

Once you are able to boot Win7 again, download EasyBCD and use it to add XP to your boot menu.

This is all off the top of my head, I haven't done it myself in awhile. Google should help you with more details on the suggested commands.

Please keep us posted with your progress.

 

thats great man thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a whirl and let you know! Also when doing this is there a possibility that my win 7 install would be unrecoverable and I would need to back up mission critical files first?

 

I'm glad you asked, I should have mentioned that. I am pretty sure we'll get it running, one way or the other, but there could be such a risk. Definitely back up data files first while you have a running OS.

 

The least hassle way to get XP working alongside a newer Windows is to create a virtual machine using VMWare Player and install XP there. You can then go into XP and run your old software without shutting down Win 7.

John

 

Thanks you guys. I used a free tool easy BCD 2.2. worked like a charm... it repaired my issue with the mbr and now I can boot both partions through my bios. Thanks a bunch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Good job!

Yes, EasyBCD is a great tool, though I've only used it to edit my boot menu, not to repair the MBR. Good to know it does that too.