15 replies to this topic

[MedEvil]

I had installed a new boot loader to switch between a XP and a Win7.
However since that install XP isn't accessable anymore.

I have already uninstalled the bootmanager and let it restore the MBR and Bootsectors it had saved upon install.
No change.

When i try to boot into XP, all i get is a blinking underline/caret/cursor, no error messages.
Otherwise the partition is accassable fine.

Is anyone familiar with this situation and knows what is causing it?

[MedEvil]

Tryed to replace the bootsector with the mirror one.
Good thing i had backed up the 'broken' one. The mirror made the partition unreadable.

I'm fresh out of ideas.

Any clever ideas, how to check, where things start to go wrong?

[MedEvil]

Some more info.

To my utter surprise, the Win7 bootloader can successfully start XP and seems to circumvent the boot.ini in the process.

[MedEvil]

Found the problem.

The stupid boot manager switched the positions of the partition in the partition table.

The first thing i notice that M$ did right with Win7, its bootloader was not affected by the switch.

[Wonko the Sane]

As a rule of thumb, partition entries should ALWAYS be sorted.


Wonko

[MedEvil]

Absolutely agree. They should best be sorted in the same order the partition have on the disk.
But most of all, they should not get moved around, without user interaction!

btw. Do you know a GUI program, that would allow to easily sort the partition table?
I used good old ptedit, but that required a lot of typing.

[Wonko the Sane]

btw. Do you know a GUI program, that would allow to easily sort the partition table?
I used good old ptedit, but that required a lot of typing.

Why GUI?
MBRWIZ has an option for this (no typing):
http://firesage.com/mbrwizard.php
The CLI version is freeware.

BTW, you do not describe WHICH "a" new boot loader you attempted using, how you set it up, etc., etc.,so this is mostly a useles topic (in the sense that it doesn't report what happened, nor why it happened, and not even who was the culprit) .



Wonko

[MedEvil]

The boot-manager was BootUS, i always loved, that it could get installed to a floppy or nowadays a CD.
This way, the bootmanager does not pop up on every boot, but only when inserted, especialy useful imo, when switching is the exception.

I defragmented the XP partition and then shrunk it to make room for a second partition.
Created a second primary partition, formatted it, set it active and hid the XP partition.
Then installed Win7 to the second pp and later the bootus program.
Created a bootus BootCD, which should switch between both systems, while truely hiding the other OS.

Switching to XP did not work right at the first try. No matter if the bootmanager was used or after switching a native boot atempt was made.
Only Win7 could be booted from the BootCD and after switching, also native.

Enough info?

[Wonko the Sane]

Enough info?

UNfortunately no.

I defragmented the XP partition and then shrunk it to make room for a second partition.
Created a second primary partition, formatted it, set it active and hid the XP partition.

Did this change partition order?
How EXACTLY (which tool) did you use to shrink partition/creating new one, etc.?
From Which OS?

Then installed Win7 to the second pp and later the bootus program.

Did this change partition order ?

Created a bootus BootCD, which should switch between both systems, while truely hiding the other OS.

Please define "truly hide" (as opposed to "simply hide").

Switching to XP did not work right at the first try. No matter if the bootmanager was used or after switching a native boot atempt was made.
Only Win7 could be booted from the BootCD and after switching, also native.

Cannot understand "switching", nor "native".

Did you try booting the XP AFTER the shrink/creation of new partition but BEFORE installing Windows 7?
Did you do what is recommended on the BOOT-US site? :
http://www.boot-us.com/tips_g02.htm

Save partition and boot sectors
Before you begin to experiment with the boot manager it is strongly recommended that you save the list of all partition and boot sectors from all disks to a bootable diskette. The created file contains all sectors which might get modified by the boot manager installation and operation. These sectors can be saved and restored both by the Windows program Boot-US and the DOS command-line utility bootusc.exe. It is recommended to save these sectors with both programs to two different files. The contents of both files must be the same.

Installation to diskette
It is strongly recommended to install the boot manager first to diskette and not on the hard disk. It is important that you choose the setting "Do not change partitions IDs". This is the default setting for version 1.2.1 and later, but not in earlier versions! With this settings no partition IDs are changed. After the boot manager has been installed to diskette you can verify that no data has been changed on the hard disk. Just restart your system and you will notice that everything works as before. Afterwards you can boot the configured partitions by the boot manager residing on the test diskette. As long as no partitions are hidden you can boot all these partitions by the test diskette.

Installation in primary partition
When the installation to diskette is successful one can think of installing the boot manager Boot-US to a primary partition on the first hard disk. Please note that this target is the default setting only for version 1.2.1 and later. Thus you need to perhaps change the installation target. It is also strongly recommended to save the complete track 0 of the first hard disk to a file and copy that file to a standard DOS formated diskette. Part of this file is the MBR with the partition table of the first hard disk. This allows you to restore the MBR of the first hard disk with a disk editor or with the DOS program bootusc.exe. Please again use the setting "Do not change partition IDs" when you install the boot manager Boot-US to a primary partition. As noted above this is the default setting for version 1.2.1 and later. If something goes wrong when installing the boot manager in a primary partition and Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 cannot be booted any more, you can restore the previous state by standard tools. By a DOS boot diskette and a standard partition manager you can deactivate the boot manager partition and activate the partition which was active before.

Installation in MBR
You should install the boot manager of Boot-US to the MBR only if this is necessary i.e. when you need the boot manager partition for other purposes. The advantage of the installation in the MBR is that no additional partition is occupied. The disadvantage is that for repairing problems more effort is required. If a problem appears and Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 cannot be booted anymore the boot manager of Boot-US must be removed from the MBR with the standard tool FDISK or by the DOS program bootusc.exe, see the following tip Removing the boot manager in case of problems.

WHERE to did you install the BOOT-US program?
Directly to the MBR?


BTW, and JFYI, grub4dos can be installed to floppy or CD and allows for hidden partitions as well .
(and allows to read/write/change order of partition entries)


Wonko

[MedEvil]

> How EXACTLY (which tool) did you use to shrink partition/creating new one, etc.?
> From Which OS?
From DOS with Acronis Partition Expert.
> Did this change partition order?
Never before.

>> Then installed Win7 to the second pp and later the bootus program.
> Did this change partition order ?
Sorry, my time machine is out of order. Can you lend me yours?

> Please define "truly hide" (as opposed to "simply hide").
Sorry can't help you there. That's what the option is called in boot-us.
It is suppose to prevent Windows from detecting other windows partition, even when they're hidden.

> Cannot understand "switching", nor "native".
A boot manager switches which partition is the active one and maybe hides some too. Once a partition is set to active, the bootmanager is not required for booting the following times, untill the active partition needs to be switched again.
native - booting without boot-us bootmanager involved

> Did you try booting the XP AFTER the shrink/creation of new partition but BEFORE installing Windows 7?
No, i didn't.

> Did you do what is recommended on the BOOT-US site?
Yes, i did a backup. But i already wrote that in the first post.

> WHERE to did you install the BOOT-US program? Directly to the MBR?
To a CD. As i stated before too!

> BTW, and JFYI, grub4dos can be installed to floppy or CD and allows for hidden partitions as well
> (and allows to read/write/change order of partition entries)
Didn't knew that. Thanks.

btw. grub4dos as it exists on a Win7PES_SE was also not able to successfully start XP.

-------------------------------------

And since you still seem to suffer from the trauma, that all your links now do what they want. A summary.

- Acronis Partition Expert - used it before in the same manner, never gave me troubles
- Win7 install - no enough experience with multi installs to rule it out as reason, but doubt it though
- boot-us - only new one in the mix. used to work great some 15 years ago

-------------------------------------

[Wonko the Sane]

btw. grub4dos as it exists on a Win7PES_SE was also not able to successfully start XP.

Well, that greatly depends on the actual situation of your MBR/DISK and on the commands you gave it.

It doesn't make much sense that "installing to CD" BOOT-US will change *anything* in the MBR or the partition table of the hard disk.
It is more likely that *something* happened at the Windows 7 install step. (and again this may depend on the EXACT way the Windows 7 install was performed).
On a "virgin" disk the 100 Mb partition will be created, on a pre-partitioned disk, it won't, maybe your setup "triggered" something similar to that.
Or possibly you omitted this step/something went wrong with it :

Installation to diskette
It is strongly recommended to install the boot manager first to diskette and not on the hard disk. It is important that you choose the setting "Do not change partitions IDs". This is the default setting for version 1.2.1 and later, but not in earlier versions! With this settings no partition IDs are changed. After the boot manager has been installed to diskette you can verify that no data has been changed on the hard disk. Just restart your system and you will notice that everything works as before. Afterwards you can boot the configured partitions by the boot manager residing on the test diskette. As long as no partitions are hidden you can boot all these partitions by the test diskette.

If you want a "plain" active/hide partition MBR, get MBLDR:
http://reboot.pro/334/
http://mbldr.sourceforge.net/

If you have - besides a backup of prior situation, a backup of the MBR after BOOT-US installation, post them, I will have a look at it and see if the aactual reason/culprit can be found...



Wonko

[MedEvil]

Sorry, once the problem was solved, i delted everything, boot-us and backups.

Yes Windows7 creates a 100MB partition, if it get's installed into an empty spot on a HDD. But if it gets installed into an existing partition, it does not alter the setup. That's why i precreated the partition with Acronis.

> It doesn't make much sense that "installing to CD" BOOT-US will change *anything* in the MBR or the
> partition table of the hard disk.
It doesn't? How else should it set a partition active or hide it?

In my experience, boot-us writes to the MBR every time it is used from CD and only when the active partition is changed from last boot, when it is installed to HDD.

[Wonko the Sane]

In my experience, boot-us writes to the MBR every time it is used from CD and only when the active partition is changed from last boot, when it is installed to HDD.

Yes, of course, but there wouldn't be any "logical reason" for it to change the "order" of partitions, if not - somehow - at "install" time. (I still think that the issue is not to be connected to BOOT-US "per-se" but to something else done before )


Wonko

[MedEvil]

There's no logical reason for any of the softwares involved to change the order in the partition table.
Aside from screwing over the XP boot loader, there's no technical benefit or advantage to one order over the other.

[Wonko the Sane]

There's no logical reason for any of the softwares involved to change the order in the partition table.
Aside from screwing over the XP boot loader, there's no technical benefit or advantage to one order over the other.

Yep , it is also possible that BOOT-US behaves like grub4dos, see (AFAICR the "standard" XP MBR doesn't care about aprtition order ) :
http://reboot.pro/14622/
but still WHAT exactly changed the partition order and WHEN will remain an unresolved mistery .


Wonko

[MedEvil]

Just realized, that i have lied.
The Windows 7 bootloader couldn't just boot XP despite the changed order.
I installed the boot option for XP with Easy BCD auto detect after the order was screwed up.
Now, that i tryed to use it again, after i had fixed the order, it's not working anymore.
So the only big thing is, that Win7 Bootloader could load XP, while apparently bypassing or overruling the boot.ini.