Apologies in advance for the long post ... but there are many pertinent details...
I'm having two problems (which I suppose are inter-related) on a PC which I set up to be multi-bootable with Windows 7, XP, and 2000:
When I boot into Windows 7, the Disk Manager for some reason is not assigning a drive letter to the Windows 2000 partition. The partition does not "show up" at all under Windows Explorer. And in Disk Manager the partition is visible but under Volume, where I should see a drive letter, it is just a blank space.
When I try to boot onto the Windows 2000 partition I get the BSOD, with a Stop code of 0X0000007B and message saying INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
This is a brand new PC I just built. And although I am not normally one to take up a new Microsoft operating system until a year or more after its release, due to the new 64bit hardware I made an exception to my self-imposed rule, and bought Windows 7. So ... here is what I did (in order):
Assembled the PC components / hardware, which includes a single WD 2Tb SATA HDD.
Installed Windows 2000 Pro SP4 from CD, into a 20GB partition formatted NTFS. Then booted a couple times to make sure it started up (which it did, just fine). Under Device Manager I saw many unknown hardware components (as expected), which I didn't worry about (because I just wanted the Windows 2000 partition there in case I want/need to actually use it at a later date). I left the drive letter assigned to the default C:\, and left D:\ as the DVD drive
Installed Windows XP Pro SP2 disk and formatted a second 20 GB NTFS partition, into which I installed Windows XP. Left the default drive letter assignment as E:. This installation also had some unknown hardware, for which I again didn't bother updating drivers because I'm only putting the partition in "in case I need it later." I booted back and forth between Windows XP and Windows 2000 a couple of times, to make sure both worked ... and they did.
Then I inserted the Windows 7 64bit DVD, formatted another NTFS partition (50 GB this time), and installed Windows 7 into it. The Motherboard is MSI P55-GD65 and I installed drivers etc. from the CD that came with the motherboard. Things seemed to be working fine, with the dual-boot menu appearing and Windows 7 booting up and running ok.
Then I noticed a strange thing (maybe not a "problem" ... just strange) happening when I run Windows 7 -- I guess since the Windows 2000 partition is not being recognized there is no C drive letter assigned ... and so when Windows 7 boots then it is assigning C to the Windows 7 partition (when I wanted C to be reserved / assigned to the Windows 2000 partition). So I'm not sure if this is "a problem" or if it is "just strange." But before I went any further (i.e., installing apps onto the Windows 7 partition) I wanted to determine if it was an issue. So I tried to boot up the Windows 2000 partition to see if it was "still using" the C letter also ... and that's when I discovered the Windows 2000 partition is no longer bootable. Seems like the Windows 7 installation knocked out the MBR (though I'm surprised, because usually the newer OS preserves the older OS MBR). But before I start thinking about trying MBRfix / Bootfix or anything else, I wanted to see if anyone else had experienced anything like this?
Additional info that may be helpful: When looking at Disk Manager in Windows 7 I see the following info:
Volume Layout Type File System Status
----- ----- ---- ----------- ------
Blank Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (system, active, primary partition)
C:\ Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, logical drive)
D:\ Simple Basic NTFS Healthy (logical drive)
E:\ --- DVD drive ----
Under Windows XP it looks like:
Volume Type File System Status
----- ---- ----------- ------
C:\ Basic NTFS Healthy (system, primary partition)
E:\ Basic NTFS Healthy (boot)
F:\ Basic NTFS Healthy
D:\ --- DVD drive ----
Thanks in advance for any ideas / help. I would like to have all three partitions working ...