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I've had Windows 7 installed for a while now and decided to install XP on another drive. It appears that XP has overwritten 7's boot loader, so XP boots up by default. I popped in my Windows 7 install disc to repair the loader. After selecting the repair option, it shows me this:

enter image description here

I clicked Repair and Restart and it still boots into XP by default. Luckily, I can go into my BIOS and do a manual override to get it to boot from the Windows Boot Manager on the drive that 7 is installed on. My goal is to have Windows 7/XP dual boot, but, for now, I just want to get the Windows 7 loader working properly.

And I am aware that there are several nearly- identical questions on here (I anxiously await the onslaught of "possible duplicate" comments and close votes), but they're all about 10 years old except for one where the answer is a link to a 20-minute YouTube video. None of them address my issue anyway.

Edit: As expected (and predicted in the paragraph preceding this one), it was closed as a dupe. I've seen all those questions/answers and I do not have an option to open a command prompt. I am literally only able to select Repair and Restart.

Also, when I remove the drive that has XP installed on it from the boot priority in BIOS and attempt to use my Windows 7 disc, I get this:

enter image description here

oscilatingcretin
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2 Answers2

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Many answers I've found point to using bootrec.exe to rebuild the MBR or boot loader. However, as mentioned in my OP, booting with the Windows 7 install disc did not give me any option to open a command prompt. In searching for the physical location of bootrec.exe on my local drive or install disc, I came upon this question:

Where can I download "bootrec.exe"?

It turns out that it's actually wrapped up in a .wim file on the disc in .\sources\boot.wim which can be opened with 7zip as an archive. Within that, bootrec.exe is found in .\1\Windows\System32\. So, while booted into Windows 7 using the aforementioned BIOS override, I extracted bootrec.exe to my desktop, opened an elevated command prompt, and ran the below commands:

enter image description here

I initially ran bootrec /rebuildbcd, but wasn't confident it worked when it said it couldn't find any Windows installations. I then tried bootrec /fixmbr. Still uncertain if it worked, I rebooted my machine and, lo and behold, Windows 7 booted up just as it used to.

So now we can add yet another solution to the problem introduced by installing Windows XP on another drive/partition after installing Windows 7.

oscilatingcretin
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First, you have to boot into Windows 7, you can do this with a tool named "SuperGrubDisk". In Windows 7, simply open a command prompt and run "bootrec /rebuild".

user12100401
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