Windows Multi-OS problem

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by ulfar, 21 Oct 2010.

  1. ulfar

    ulfar holy s**t, i can change this?

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    hey forum, did a quick search on the topic and couldn't find what i was looking for.

    here's the thing, a while ago i was running xp in "single os mode". i then got a hold of win 7 beta through school and installed. now i was running two os, one on each partition and everything was fine, at startup i got to choose which i wanted to run.

    when win 7 was released i got it and decided to format each partition to make a clean start (tend to do that from time to time). now, when i installed them again i only had win 7 running (started with installing xp), i didn't get to choose at startup.

    now a year later i figured "screw you win 7, i want xp for gaming", installed again on my d partition, and now i can't boot into win 7 :p. (the old installation was just lying around gathering binary dust).
    it's a laptop if that helps.

    any settings in bios (?) i need to change? doubt it since i've never had to before. been running multi os since win 2k and never experienced this before.
     
    ulfar, 21 Oct 2010
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  2. badders

    badders Neuken in de Keuken

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    You'll need to boot from the Windows 7 disc and run "Startup Repair" which should put the Windows 7 bootloader back. This should pick up both installations and give you the correct boot menu to let you choose the installation to boot.
     
    badders, 21 Oct 2010
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  3. ulfar

    ulfar holy s**t, i can change this?

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    alright sounds reasonable, will try that when i get home.
    any thoughts on why this happened? is it a win 7/vista specific problem or just something that got messed up during installation?
     
    ulfar, 21 Oct 2010
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  4. badders

    badders Neuken in de Keuken

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    You installed XP over the top of Win7, so XP wrote it's bootloader over the windows 7 one.

    It's an XP issue, not a Windows 7 one.

    Without any question I'd ditch the XP installation to be honest - is there any particular reason you're installing it for games? Any that completely don't work under Win7?
     
    badders, 21 Oct 2010
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  5. ulfar

    ulfar holy s**t, i can change this?

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    actually i installed xp over win7 once and win 7 over xp once and had the same issue.

    the reason is mostly that my 1 gig ram isn't enough really, having problems when playing.
    i'm gonna slim win 7 down as well, to see if there's a significant speed difference.
    forgot if i have an extra slot for ram, will check later today.

    edit:
    even the simple ones like civ 4 are a burden for my laptop. i know it's more of a gfx issue, but i didn't experience this as much when i had xp
     
    Last edited: 21 Oct 2010
    ulfar, 21 Oct 2010
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