Dual Boot wont go away

Hi ... Are you saying you had 2 separate hard drive each having its own OS ( XP , Vista ) You were having MBR problems because you remove Vista and had to use third party software to get your system working again ?

I have 5 hard drives all connected , 3 have its own OS ( XP pro , Vista and W7 ) I can boot anyone of these from within the bios setting . Not once do I have any problems loading any of them . I can even remove any of the 3 OS drives and still be able to load the other 2 without any problems . I do all my changes within the bios setting ...

Hi Snooker,

Yes. Let me explain in more detail. Originally I had Windows XP Professional running on Hard Drive (HD) A. Then I bought a 1 TB WD Caviar Black HD B, hoping to install multiple boot on the new HD. I connected both HDs A and B on the same SATA (II) cable to the motherboard. Then I partitioned HD B to several partitions. I installed Vista 64 bit on HD B Partition 1. However, since HD A is also connected, and in the BIOS setup was the first boot device, Vista actually changed the MBR of HD A, and added the Vista bootloader starting from Sector 1 (The MBR occupies Sector 0 of HD A).

If you installed the OSs separately on different HDs (i.e., not connecting another old HD having an OS when you install a new OS on the new HD), you will not have this problem. And yes, you can easily change the BIOS setting to boot from any bootable HD.

Hi ... Are you saying you had 2 separate hard drive each having its own OS ( XP , Vista ) You were having MBR problems because you remove Vista and had to use third party software to get your system working again ?

I have 5 hard drives all connected , 3 have its own OS ( XP pro , Vista and W7 ) I can boot anyone of these from within the bios setting . Not once do I have any problems loading any of them . I can even remove any of the 3 OS drives and still be able to load the other 2 without any problems . I do all my changes within the bios setting ...

Hi Snooker,

Yes. Let me explain in more detail. Originally I had Windows XP Professional running on Hard Drive (HD) A. Then I bought a 1 TB WD Caviar Black HD B, hoping to install multiple boot on the new HD. I connected both HDs A and B on the same SATA (II) cable to the motherboard. Then I partitioned HD B to several partitions. I installed Vista 64 bit on HD B Partition 1. However, since HD A is also connected, and in the BIOS setup was the first boot device, Vista actually changed the MBR of HD A, and added the Vista bootloader starting from Sector 1 (The MBR occupies Sector 0 of HD A).

If you installed the OSs separately on different HDs (i.e., not connecting another old HD having an OS when you install a new OS on the new HD), you will not have this problem. And yes, you can easily change the BIOS setting to boot from any bootable HD.

Thanks for the info . I'm glad I never did multiple boots on the same drive . I bought 4 seagate 80gb oem drives about 3 years ago and they are still going good . I will be happy if they last another 3 years . One of these 4 drives I have formatted maybe at least a hundred times just see how the outcome would be like , its working good .

I would like to share with you my recent experience with multiple boot.

Previously, my home computer was running under Windows XP Pro. I bought a WD Caviar Black 1 TB hard drive (HD) just before Windows 7 Beta was officially released. I connected the new HD together with my old HD running XP Pro to the motherboard via the same SATA (II) cable.

Then I partitioned the new HD into two primary and one extended partitions. I installed Vista Home Premium 64-bit that came with the computer (which I uninstalled due to many issues with Vista, mainly software incompatibilities) onto the first partition of the new HD, and I installed Ubuntu 8.10 64 bit onto the second partition. For a few days, the computer was doing fine, able to triple boot into XP Pro, Vista, and Ubuntu.

The nightmare began when I updated Windows XP by running Microsoft Update. After required restart, I cannot boot into any of the OSs. Apparently, the GRUB loader was messed up by this update. Luckily I had a backup hard drive of the XP Pro, and I started the computer with the backup HD. Due to some lingering Vista issues, I installed Windows 7 Beta in the first partition of the new WD Carivar Black HD, replacing Vista. And this installation seemed to partially fix the booting problem. I can boot into XP Pro and Windows 7 Beta, but I lost Ubuntu.

A few days ago, I purchased another WD HD (RE3 1 TB). I used 7 Tools Partition Manager 2009 to make a raw copy of the XP Hard Drive onto the WD RE3 1 TB HD. Initially, the new HD cannot boot into XP Pro. Fearing the mess I created by connecting two hard drives on the same SATA cable to the motherboard, I connected only one HD at a time this time to install the OS. I connected the other HD via a USB enclosure to make copies. Then I installed Windows 7 Beta on another partition of the WD RE3 1 TB HD. This fix the XP Pro boot problem. Now I can boot into XP Pro and Windows 7 Beta on the same hard drive (WD RE3). I used the VistaBootPro software to delete the entry for Vista, then edited the boot.ini file using Notepad to get rid of two extra entries for Windows XP Pro. Now I have only Windows OSs on the WD RE3 hard drive. Hopefully the bootloader will not be messed up again.

Lesson learned: Do NOT dual boot a Windows OS with Ubuntu on the same hard drive or on different hard drives connecting together to the motherboard. Updates to Windows OS could mess up the GRUB bootloader installed by Ubuntu.

I need some help configuring my computer. I had XP Pro installed on C:, then I installed Win7 on D: (separate physical hard drives). All went well, and each time I rebooted, I was given the option to boot to either OS. I decided to make W7 my primary OS, and wanted to move it to C: because it is a faster drive. So, I backed up some files, formatted C: and D: to remove both OSs. I then installed XP on D: I didn't do any updates, but went straight to installing W7 on C:. Now, I do not get the option to choose which OS to boot to. It boot straight to W7 on C:

In windows disk management, D: is listed as Disk 0 and C: as Disk 1.

I have two more SATA drives connected, but neither has an OS installed.

I would like to be able to boot to XP, and anyone help?

Update: I installed Vista Boot Pro on Win7, but I I'm not sure how to use it. I added an entry and called it XP last night, but did not edit or do anything with the BCD. This morning when I booted up, I was given three choices - Win7, Ramdrive - Win Recovery Env. or XP. I booted to Win7 and started VBP. Curiously, when I tried to start VBP this morning, it said that it was either not installed or installed on a hidden drive, and then started There were three entries initially, (Win7, Windows Recovery environment, and XP). Here is the text copied from the detailed BCD Registry Settings Screen:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {c517f54a-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
displayorder {current}
{c517f54c-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
{ntldr}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {c517f54c-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {c517f54a-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
nx OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {c517f54c-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
device ramdisk=[C:]\Recovery\c517f54c-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6\Winre.wim,{c517f54d-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
path \windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Recovery Environment
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice ramdisk=[C:]\Recovery\c517f54c-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6\Winre.wim,{c517f54d-0a12-11de-a0c3-eeecfad62bf6}
systemroot \windows
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description XP