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How do I select boot disc?

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bumpkin
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Posted June 14, 2012 at 11:29PM

Hi everyone, I have recently bought a HP Compaq PC (F10) a few years old. It has Windows 7 O/S on C drive. I have put in a second drive with XP pro as the O/S. Both work fine but I cannot find out how to choose which to boot from I can only boot from the XP disc if I unplug the win 7 one. There has to be a setting somewhere on boot menu but I cannot find it.

Any help please

Ray

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bumpkin

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Posted June 15, 2012 at 3:25PM

Thanks again, Have read both postings. By boot menu I was reffering to BIOS settings. So I run Setup from the CD presumably just once then I will be able to select either OS ?

Ray

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woody

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Posted June 15, 2012 at 3:39PM

Here is a detailed page -

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/8790/dual-boot-your-pre-installed-windows-7-computer-with-xp/

I think it tells all - if not come back to this page

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted June 15, 2012 at 3:45PM

No.

You have W7 on C: XP on another drive

XP boot files need to be on C: and the win 7 boot menu needs to be altered to be able to see the XP boot files.

In a dual boot scenario (Win 7 with XP) you must have on FIRST disk ACTIVE partition: (C:)

Windows MBR

bootmgr with BCD having an additional entry for XP.

ntldr and ntdetect.com

boot.ini

When computer starts BIOS code is executed which does some tests and then loads MBR from FIRST disk. MBR code loads PBR from ACTIVE partition. Then PBR code loads bootmgr. bootmgr reads BCD data and displays boot menu.

When you select Windows 7 - control is transfered to winload.exe which loads Windows 7 proper. When you select XP boot menu entry control is transfered to ntldr (ntldr displays another boot menu based on entries in boot.ini)

For a complete display and editing of BCD contents you can use Visual BCD Editor.

For finding the exact ARC Path (multi(0)disk...partition() thing) of your XP installation and disks configuration you can use "ARC Paths" utility. You have to edit your old boot.ini replacing "old" ARC paths with the "new" ARC paths.

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rdave13

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Posted June 15, 2012 at 4:15PM

If you can boot to Win 7 with the XP Hdd connected, try installing EasyBCD in Win 7. Not sure if free any more but this seems to be still free, link

Guides here. Should be able to give a boot manager screen at startup.

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bumpkin

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Posted June 15, 2012 at 8:16PM

Hi, thanks to all for your help and suggestions. I used EasyBCD in the end as it was easiest for me,

Ray

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