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Win XP won't boot in dual boot with Win7

3K views 30 replies 4 participants last post by  MisterEd51 
#1 ·
Hey Gang,

I have an old desktop that still uses Win7 and WinXP. Hey, I like it for the size. It feels like a real computer. lol. Anyway. It is a dual boot system. Win7 is the default boot and Win XP is the secondary boot.

It worked fine awhile ago but today I fired it up and discovered that it didn't boot into XP. The snapshot below explains why. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Peter's XP Problem.jpg
 
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#5 ·
If you are booted into Windows 7 the partition with Windows 7 is designated "C drive."

If you are booted into XP the partition with XP is designated "C drive" (although it is possible to mess this up).

Without seeing how the partitions are positioned on the hard drive it is impossible to predict how the others are assigned "drive" letters. And even then the prediction may be incorrect.
 
#4 ·
I assume you are able to boot to Windows 7 OK but not Windows XP.

If so you seem to indicate there is a problem with the hal.dll file under Windows XP.

Looking the reference I mentioned you should be able to replace that file manually using "Fix #3: Replace hal.dll"

Step 6 assumes that Windows XP is on partition C:. If not you will need to change the partition letter in step 6 to that of the partition with Windows XP.

Step 6.
expand D:\i386\hal.dl_ X:\Windows\system32\

where
D is drive letter for CD with Windows XP
X is drive letter for Windows XP

If that does not make sense post back here
 
#6 ·
If you are booted into Windows 7 the partition with Windows 7 is designated "C drive."

If you are booted into XP the partition with XP is designated "C drive" (although it is possible to mess this up).

Without seeing how the partitions are positioned on the hard drive it is impossible to predict how the others are assigned "drive" letters. And even then the prediction may be incorrect.
I have a dual boot system with two distinct hard drives. One hard drive is solid state and my default boot. It is C and it has Win7 on it. The second hard drive is a Seagate 5400 and has my older system, WinXP on it. The designation is D drive.

I haven't had a chance to test the solution in Step 6 #3 that Mr Ed has given me because I have been looking all over for my original boot disks and haven't been able to find them. I bough new ones on Ebay and they just arrived today. I will try the solution Mr Ed gave me and I will get back to you. ty
 
#7 · (Edited)
I assume you are able to boot to Windows 7 OK but not Windows XP.

If so you seem to indicate there is a problem with the hal.dll file under Windows XP.

Looking the reference I mentioned you should be able to replace that file manually using "Fix #3: Replace hal.dll"

Step 6 assumes that Windows XP is on partition C:. If not you will need to change the partition letter in step 6 to that of the partition with Windows XP.

Step 6.
expand D:\i386\hal.dl_ X:\Windows\system32\

where
D is drive letter for CD with Windows XP
X is drive letter for Windows XP

If that does not make sense post back here
Thanks, your instructions were clear. I lost my original installation disks and I have ordered new ones on Ebay. I have them now and I will try a repair tomorrow. ty.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Thanks, your instructions were clear. I lost my original installation disks and I have ordered new ones on Ebay. I have them now and I will try a repair tomorrow. ty.
Hey Gang

Thanks for waiting. I tried a repair and I got stopped by an an "access denied" error. In this problem, F is the name of the drive where the XP installation CD is located. D is the name of the drive where XP is already installed. Remember this computer has two physical drives, Drives C and Drive D. C drive is where Win7 is and D is where WinXP is. The default boot is Win 7 or the C drive, D is the secondary boot where XP is located.

What's my next step?I didn't type an administrator password, all I did was click Enter. That is because I don't have an administrator password.

I am working with MR.Ed's instructions from the link he gave me above. I am using the info provided from the page called "Fix 3 Replace Hal.dll"

I appreciate all the help
winxpdualbootproblem2.jpg

Kappy:)
 
#9 ·
Hey Gang

Thanks for waiting. I tried a repair and I got stopped by an an "access denied" error. In this problem, F is the name of the drive where the XP installation CD is located. D is the name of the drive where XP is already installed. Remember this computer has two physical drives, Drives C and Drive D. C drive is where Win7 is and D is where WinXP is. The default boot is Win 7 or the C drive, D is the secondary boot where XP is located.

What's my next step?I didn't type an administrator password, all I did was click Enter. That is because I don't have an administrator password.

I am working with MR.Ed's instructions from the link he gave me above. I am using the info provided from the page called "Fix 3 Replace Hal.dll"

I appreciate all the help
View attachment 278876
Kappy:)
Also, I made a Norton 15 backup of both drives. The problem is that they are both 18 months old. If I ran the Norton backup is there a way to restore only the boot files? If not, would I have to restore the C drive, the D drive or both? The reason I ask is because it will be a lot more work to preserve files I have written in the last 18 months on two disks than it would be for one. If I can get away with restoring one drive instead of two I would prefer it.

I have also ran chkdsk and SFC /snannnow with no results.
 
#11 ·
That is doing things the really hard way. Dual boot is not hard if you know how o set it up.

I use a program called EasyBCD which free for personal use.

EasyBCD
http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

I am not sure what the current state of the OPs computer is here is one example
Drive 1: Windows 7
Drive 2: Windows XP

Problem: When Windows XP tries to boot there is an error.
Solution 1: Possibly a simple but time consuming solution that would be not for a beginner
Solution 2: Reinstall Windows XP on Drive 2 and use EasyBCD to reconfigure dual-boot

If Windows XP is installed first followed by Windows 7 then Windows 7 is smart enough to set up dual-boot for you.

If Windows 7 is installed first followed by Windows XP then Windows XP is not smart enough to set up dual-boot for you. That is why you need something like EasyBCD to manually set up dual boot.
 
#14 ·
I used to do this before. I partitioned my HDD in half and first installed XP and when completed installed W7 on the second partition. I then installed the easybcd and then made the modifications. I had to do a repair on XP to make it back to work. I cannot remember very well on the steps since it has been quite some time I have not done it. Whenever I restarted my computer or turned it on I just selected which OS I wanted to use.
With Windows 10 you don't need the easybcd installed. you can have W10 and W7 or XP.
 
#16 ·
I now have a new desktop with two SSD. One with W7 and the other with W10. I mostly use W10 to surf internet and just use W7 when I need to use some older programs I had on XP. I also have some extra HDD for backups and have an XP laptop just in case I need to do some work with older programs but never use it for surfing the internet.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Switching the order in the BIOS is a waste of time when using a windows boot manage does the job much better. The computer I set up in the example I gave can not even be configured in the BIOS to select individual disks. For example I can select CD, HDD, etc but not individual devices. I can set the boot orderr to CD, HDD when I want to boot a CD or DVD. I change the order back to HDD, HDD when I want to boot from the hard drive. I could leave the order at CD, HDD but that slows down the boot because it has to wait for the boot from CD to time out before it will continue and boot from the hard drive.

I have been dual-booting for over twenty years now. The first computer I did this had an Intel 486DX2/66 CPU. In 1997 I had Windows 95 and Slackware 3.4 on it. The boot manager I used was LILO. Years later I switched to GRUB. The boot that Windows has now is much more flexible than it was back then. It can easily handle Win95, Win98, WinXP, Win7, Win 10, and even Linux. That makes it much better to let Windows handle the boot process rather than Linux.

BTW, I found it was a mistake to try to install the original Windows XP without any service packs. I had reserved a small part of a 1TB hard drive for it. Windows XP setup proceeded to trash the drives partition table. Luckily I had a recent backup for it. I then found out that original Windows XP had a 137GB drive limit. SP1 fixed that.

In any event don't give up. It is a enjoyable to learn how to do this.

In 2004 I set up Linux Fedora Core 2 (FC2) to dual boot with Windows XP. FC2 had a bug that messed up the drive's partitions. Fedora eventually admitted to the problem but said it would not fix it until Fedora Core 3. It took me a few weeks but I finally figured out how to fix the disk's partition so that both WinXP and FC2 could be booted.
 
#19 ·
Switching the order in the BIOS is a waste of time when using a windows boot manage does the job much better. The computer I set up in the example I gave can not even be configured in the BIOS to select individual disks. For example I can select CD, HDD, etc but not individual devices. I can set the boot orderr to CD, HDD when I want to boot a CD or DVD. I change the order back to HDD, HDD when I want to boot from the hard drive. I could leave the order at CD, HDD but that slows down the boot because it has to wait for the boot from CD to time out before it will continue and boot from the hard drive.

I have been dual-booting for over twenty years now. The first computer I did this had an Intel 486DX2/66 CPU. In 1997 I had Windows 95 and Slackware 3.4 on it. The boot manager I used was LILO. Years later I switched to GRUB. The boot that Windows has now is much more flexible than it was back then. It can easily handle Win95, Win98, WinXP, Win7, Win 10, and even Linux. That makes it much better to let Windows handle the boot process rather than Linux.

BTW, I found it was a mistake to try to install the original Windows XP without any service packs. I had reserved a small part of a 1TB hard drive for it. Windows XP setup proceeded to trash the drives partition table. Luckily I had a recent backup for it. I then found out that original Windows XP had a 137GB drive limit. SP1 fixed that.

In any event don't give up. It is a enjoyable to learn how to do this.

In 2004 I set up Linux Fedora Core 2 (FC2) to dual boot with Windows XP. FC2 had a bug that messed up the drive's partitions. Fedora eventually admitted to the problem but said it would not fix it until Fedora Core 3. It took me a few weeks but I finally figured out how to fix the disk's partition so that both WinXP and FC2 could be booted.
Well I downloaded Easy BCD creater and put it on a blank DVD. Then I rebooted and played the DVD then I clicked Repair this disk and it ran about two minutes. Then I shut down the PC and waited about 10 seconds and then I tried to boot into XP. No joy. What should I do now, Thanks, K
 
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