Win7 boot.ini?

Hi all,

I did a clean install of W7 and it went without a hitch. However, to me anyway, it doesn't seem that intuitive as compared to 95, 98, ME, and XP. Trying to find familiar things (the Windows folder, Windows Explorer, Run, Search, Registry, the layout of Program Files, who the heck I am on this thing, etc.), seems to be what Uncle Bill wants and not what I want.

I realize there's going to be a learning curve, but after 5 hours of trying to find and do stuff, I'm not impressed yet.

What are my questions? Well, as the days go on I'll have plenty; but for now I just have 3:

1) I've got W7 on a slave drive. To what do I amend the boot.ini file in XP to be able to boot to the slave. It's now: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Professional(2) "

2) How do I keep "it" from locking me out of everything? I can't even access most of it through XP Explorer. I keep getting "Access Denied" both in XP and W7.

3) I'm the only user, yet when it boots up, there's an option for administrator and me. How do I turn off\delete the "me" and just run it as Administrator (turn off UAC???)?

 

To make it easier for you, let’s start with number 3:

3. To turn off UAC, go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > User Accounts > Change UAC settings and move the slider down. If you move it to the bottom, it will turn it off completely. You may want to move the slider back up after a bit of familiarisation.

1. Windows 7 doesn’t use Boot.ini, but you can change the boot order by clicking the Windows Orb (Start), type msconfig and press Enter. Go to the Boot Tab, highlight Windows 7 and make it the default. There are better boot handlers but let’s ignore them for the moment.

2. The location of XP folders like Documents & Settings and History are no longer in the same place. They are displayed when ‘hidden files’ are displayed but they are ‘Junctions‘, i.e. they are there for historical reasons so that old programs that would normally use them are redirected to the new Windows 7 locations. Junctions can be recognised by having a little curly up-arrow like a shortcut and cannot be accessed.

You can see a list of these folders using a command prompt. Click the Windows Orb (Start) > Run, type cmd /k dir /al (note the three spaces) and press Enter. The results will be a list of all the Junctions for the user folders, showing the name of the old XP user folder and the name of the new folder in brackets.

 

Hi BurrWalnut,

Thanks for the info. There's a couple of things I'll need clarification on, but that's for later.

For now, as Win7 is installed on a Slave Drive, how do I boot to it? When I tried to boot using the XP boot.ini configuration (multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Professional(2) ") all I got was a gray bar at the bottom of the screen.

To what do I amend the above to so it'll boot to the Slave\Win7? I know that the "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\" is correct (I thimk).

 

You must have booted to Windows 7 otherwise you would not have found the errors that you posted. So, as I said in 1 above, boot to Windows 7, you can change the boot order by clicking the Windows Orb (Start), type msconfig and press Enter. Go to the Boot Tab, highlight Windows 7 and click Set as default. Next time you boot, you will have 30 seconds to choose XP otherwise it will boot to Win7.

You could download VistaBootPro from here http://www.vistabootpro.org/ to change bootmgr, which is the successor to boot.ini in Vista and Win7.

 

Yes, I did boot to 7 when I had it hooked up as a solo Master Disk. The question now is that since WXP is the main system on my computer, and Win7 is on the Slave\Secondary drive, what do I amend so that when I'm given the choice on bootup as to what I want to boot to (Drive 1 = XP Pro; or Drive 2 = Win7) it'll boot to Drive 2 Win7?

 

Ah, so you installed it as a separate entity.

1. I don’t know if this will work but try it:
Make the Win7 HDD master (cable select or master on rear jumper) and XP as slave.
Boot to Win7.
Download/install VistaBootPro, as I said above.
Run VPB > File > Rescan and hopefully it will set up a dual boot for you.

2. If it doesn’t create a dual-boot system:
Boot from the Windows 7 DVD, answer a few questions, navigate to the Repair Option and choose Command Prompt.
Type BOOTREC /FIXMBR (the capitals are for clarity only) and press Enter
Type BOOTREC /FIXBOOT (the capitals are for clarity only) and press Enter
Finally, close the cmd prompt, remove the DVD and let it restart.

 

Hi BurrWalnut,

I found out that the XP bootloader isn't forward compatible; so no amending of any kind will work.

OK, so I go into the BIOS, change the boot order to HD(1), F10 -save and exit. Then when I'm in W7, who do I boot to: Administrator, or Chris? I didn't set up any account, but I have 2. I know that when I'm in "Chris" I keep getting "denied" messages, so I know I have to turn off UAC.

So, when in msconfig I click on the Boot Tab and select Win7, "set as default ", when I reboot, I'll have a boot screen choice offering of XP or Win7?

I take it that I leave the BIOS setting as is, correct?

 

As I said earlier, using either msconfig or VBP you will be able to decide the default operating system.

Leave the BIOS setting.

 

Hi BurrWalnut,

I found (actually, was shown) a 1-2-3 approach to do what I want, without brain damage, using "EasyBCD ".

 

Well done, I'm glad you sorted it out.

 

Thanks, but I didn't sort it out: It was sorted out for me

 

Hi BurrWalnut,

Well, I spoke too soon! No joy whatsoever.

However, I did find a way to dual-boot XP and W7 that was pretty straight forward; just a little copying, pasting, amending, and re-hooking it up.

If anyone is reading this, please post and I'll start a new thread with "How to dual-boot XP & W7 on separate HDD's ".