Moved windows 7 boot manager and it didnt work.

[stephanie]

As usual when dealing with boot loaders I always get into trouble and now need to ask for help. :\ What I want to do is move windows 7 boot manager or w/e it's called to a different hard drive. On the drive it's at rite now is an xp installation with I'm about to format.

1. To clarify C:-xp, E:-windows 7.
2. Stupid me didn't make a backup/export of what I edited when messing with bcdedit.
3. I've removed all the C: using bcdedit that seems like it's from xp but left the boot manager with was on C: but now it's moved to E:
4. When I switch to the E: hd in bios and boot up it says ntldr is missing.
5. When I use the C: drive in bios it boots into windows 7 just fine.
6. I've made sure the hd I'm moving it to is set to active.
7. I'm wondering when I used bcdedit that if it just copied xp's boot manager and not windows 7 (if there different?).. all I know is I am confused and in need of help lol.

[Heimdal]

Originally Posted by stephanie

As usual when dealing with boot loaders I always get into trouble and now need to ask for help. : What I want to do is move windows 7 boot manager or w/e it's called to a different hard drive. On the drive it's at rite now is an xp installation with I'm about to format.

1. To clarify C:-xp, E:-windows 7.
2. Stupid me didn't make a backup/export of what I edited when messing with bcdedit.
3. I've removed all the C: using bcdedit that seems like it's from xp but left the boot manager with was on C: but now it's moved to E:
4. When I switch to the E: hd in bios and boot up it says ntldr is missing.
5. When I use the C: drive in bios it boots into windows 7 just fine.
6. I've made sure the hd I'm moving it to is set to active.
7. I'm wondering when I used bcdedit that if it just copied xp's boot manager and not windows 7 (if there different?).. all I know is I am confused and in need of help lol.

windows 7 doesn't even use NTLDR

just run the repair/recovery from the 7 drive or use the dvd

[stephanie]

eh k? I just thought of something but I'll test it later on perhaps as I might sleep soon. It probably would have worked if I ran bcdedit under xp itself and not windows 7 huh? :\ Makes sense even now that I think about it.

[SaberMonk]

Well, good luck figuring it out. I installed Win7 on a separate partition just to test it out, gather drivers, etc, before making the final transition to 7. But then I couldn't get back into XP, and when I tried a recovery operation on my XP install, it erased all my registry entries, desktop shortcuts, start menu shortcuts, control panel tweaks, etc. All my data is intact because it was on a different partition, but basically now I'm forced to switch to Windows 7 anyway because it would take too stinking long to fix all my XP tweaks

[Sabert00th]

i have nothing but problems when trying to get multiple OSes on same system ...try to avoid that because of boot loader problems like yours :O

[PsychoPenguinX]

I always use EasyBCD to edit my MBR and it has never given me problems. I had Win7 beta, XP, and linux running on a triple boot with very little trouble thanks to it before. It should give you the options you need given you can still boot and didn't kill it first since it's a windows program.