[SOLVED] Need help undoing Windows 7 changes to Windows XP boot partition

Hello All,

I tried installing a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on a bare hard drive in my system.

I did not disconnect the other drives. I got the Windows 7 running and updated,
but my Windows XP installation is not working. This is what I get:
==============================================
chainloader /bootmgr

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Press any key to continue...

I press any key and get brought to the red GRUB4DOS screen

==============================================

I can still boot XP using Hirens 10.4, and selecting the XP ntldr option.

So apparently, I have not gorked the patient. However, I cannot boot
normally, that is without Hirens.

Can someone tell me what I need to remove, or undo, to restore my normal boot?

It seems that something is cutting in before ntldr, but Hirens can bypass it.

Thanks

 

Tnanks for the reply IronMaiden,

I am not familiar with Windows 7 and this is the first time I have installed it on a machine.
I was careless to install it on the clean drive while the rest of my drives were connected.
I am not a fan of dual boot systems with different operating systems controlled by a boot
manager. I installed Windows 7 on a clean drive in a removable drive bay. My goal was to
select the boot drive in the BIOS boot options if I wanted to override my default boot drive.
Will EasyBCD reconfigure the XP boot drive so that it can boot without the Windows 7 drive
connected? I would like to keep the two OS's completely separate as I gradually switch to
Windows 7. The full switch won't happen until I can build a new machine. Right now I'm using
a machine using an MSI 7514 motherboard and and Intel duocore E7200 CPU.

I was in a hurry and did not open the case to disconnect the other drives. Apparently, the
Windows 7 installation process "saw" the XP drive and did something to the MBR. Now the
XP drive looks for the bootmgr to decide what should boot. I have had no luck with various
utilities or the recovery console to rebuild the MBR (fixboot, fixmbr). Either the utilities would
not work, or in the case of the recovery console, I cannot access it. Through all of this I can
still boot the drive with Hiren's 10.4 using the advanced boot options. As near as I can figure,
that option ignores the MBR and goes straight to ntldr. I need to fix the MBR so it points to
ntldr again. I hope I am making sense here.

Any help is appreciated.

OldCompguy

 

Problem Solved

I did not want to run Windows 7 alongside my Windows XP drive. I did not try it, but while I was solving
the problem (see below) on the crippled machine, I found this comment in the forum browsing around with
another machine on the home network:

To IronMaiden:

mydigitallife.net/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-windows-7-or-vista-leaving-windows-xp-on-dual-boot-system/comment-page-2/#comments

"steve February 14, 2011 at 4:24 pm

I'm sorry if this has already been mentioned, but the program "EasyBCD" can be installed in XP,
and will provide you the ability to modify the Vista/Windows 7 bootloader, or even revert to the
XP MBR with one click. No need for any DVD or command prompts."

I did not try to run it from within XP. Anybody out there know if this will work?


To 911medic:

I could not access the recovery console on the hard drive, and trying to use the XP install disk
resulted in bluescreens.



Solution:

I had two partitions on the boot drive. I installed a parallel copy of XP on the second partition.
this restored the MBR to "XP condition" and got rid of Windows 7 changes and bootmgr interference.

[I had tried a number of MBR repair utilities with no success (MBRfix, Partition Table Doctor 3.5, MBRwizard, et. al.)]

The boot.ini file on the C: drive (original XP installation) then had the parallel XP installation as the default.
The boot menu still had my old options, and I just needed a quick finger on the scroll down key to select my
old XP installation. Then I edited the boot.ini file to make the old installation the default again.

Everything works just fine now. I'll clone the drive to another, and start messing with Windows 7 again......


Thanks