Hi, regular visitor of bit tech. Recently built a PC, got it working soon enough and installed windows xp sp3. Decided to dual boot with windows 7 also. Later on decided to install some unix based operating systems, namely fedora 13 and freebsd. Fedora worked like a charm, while freebsd didn't fully install so i quit the installation. Turns out a second boot manager was installed as part of the partial installation. Ever since I partially installed freebsd, the windows boot manager has been acting up. Namely not booting the windows 7 partition. The funny thing is, the XP partition still works. The windows boot manager gives me this error: "the selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupted" Along with the error message, the boot manager tells me to insert the windows 7 disk and make a repair. This fails. I cannot understand this, since I made a new partition for each operating system. In an attempt to solve this, I deleted all partitions other than the xp partition, then made a new windows 7 partition, but I get the same error. I have also tried to run some command prompt commands (bcdedit, I seem to remember) with the windows 7 repair program, after reading of similar cases on other forums. Is there anybody out there who can help me? Thanks in advance, Adam.
Have you tried this forum? http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html I had a similar problem dual booting 7 and XP. This guide gives both solutions depending on which OS you installed first. Another option is to use a boot manager/loader if you want to use several OSs but I am not sure if these are free programs.
The thing is, it was only the freebsd installation which caused any problems. Before that, I had XP, Win 7 and Fedora 13 working fine. Also the error I keep getting occurs at the windows boot manager.
As the XP build was the 1st partition, I would suggest booting to it and then having a look at what it mentions here: Right Click "My Computer" and go to Properties. Click "Advanced" tab and then click "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery" and finally go to "Edit". As you have deleted all other partitions, the Boot.ini should look a little like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect It may be worth getting rid of the Win7 partition and clean the Boot.ini of any other entries to look like the above, then begin the Win7 installation again. Let me know how you get on....
Download a little program called "easy BCD", it'll let you install the boot loader as you want it and you'll be able to delete any old crap that you no longer need.