I has a problem

Here's the dealio fellas: I was fixing a puter last week and I had to reformat the HDD in my puter. After I did this, everytime I would reboot it would say that there were two versions of XP. One worked one didn't. I didn't really think too much of this until yesterday when I installed Windows 7 Black Edition on my partition.

I was hoping to dual boot but, when I reboot now it gives me the option for earlier versions however, it's the one that does not work.

When I boot using 7, I can see the other part of the partition and everything is there. My question is, can I fix this so it will boot properly?

You may be able to change the boot selection using msconfig.
Go to the run command and type msconfig and look at the boot tab. Write everything down so that you can change it back if necessary. I can help you more this evening when I get home from work.

The only thing in the boot tab is: Windows 7 Black Edition (g:/windows): Current OS; Default OS

Is your good copy of Windows XP on a different hard drive? or is it on the same drive?

If it's on a different drive you just need to change the hard drive boot order in the bios.
Press the Delete key when the system posts to enter the bios. I think the setting your looking for is under Advanced Settings. It should be the 2nd item. Hard Drive Boot Priority. Use the page up and/or the page down key to change the order.

If it's on the same drive you can try booting the system with your Windows XP CD. It may have an option to repair your existing installation. DO NOT select the the option to repair using the Recovery Consule. The option your looking for is at the screen for a new install. if it sees your old install it may give you the option to repair it.


Edit:
I have an old Maxtor 250 GB SATA 150 Hard Drive I can send you. It's old and slow compared to the new ones but it would let you just pick a drive to use from the bios. Let me know.

[Krimson]

there are programs that will allow you to manage your boot partitions.. i think symantec or norton makes one... the name is escaping me now.

also, try doing a repair liek slay said...

also, try editing your boot.ini

you do it by editing the selections already there... so, you would fix the previous one that doesnt work. (post what your boot.ini looks like, and i may be able to help you)

but, you need to let us know how many disks are in, what way they are partitioned, etc... because if its on separate physical disks, its pretty easy.

if you partitioned one disk into several, you will have to look in control panel > admin tools > computer management > disk management and get the properties of each drive you want to use... (labels, positions, etc)

Thanks for the suggestions fellas but, the problem worked itself out. I added my brothers 120gb notebook sata drive so I could run XP as well. Everything went fine and it installed without a hitch. I went to reboot to make sure everything went well and wouldn't ya know it, it said there was two XP's running instead of XP and Windows 7. Not that I mind but, it seemed to fix my main drive and reverted it to the original XP! Very odd!

[BuffaloChips]

Hiren's boot cd my aid in fixing things like that. Which reminds me. I still have the issue that my PC is always trying to boot from an old boot partition and I can't get it worked out. I have to keep Hiren's cd in all the time so it boots right.

It started after I used it to remove my system passwords because somehow the log-on passwords got changed. After that the PC wants to boot from an old boot record from when I was last goofing around with a Linux flavor. So I get a GRUB boot loader error without Hiren's Boot CD in the cd drive.