Cannot restore MBR in Windows 7

Question

I successfully installed windows xp on top of windows 7. My problem now is to boot Windows 7. I used the installation cd to repair the mbr. I used both the command-line and the gui to fix the mbr.

bootrec/fixmbr
bootrec/fixboot

But here's what happened: The option to boot to windows 7 appeared. Together with the linux mint which I installed inside of 7(Wubi Installation). I booted with Linux Mint and it works fine. But when I tried to boot to Windows 7. The Starting windows boot animation appeared. But after 1-3 seconds a seemingly BSOD appeared. But it just appeared for about 1 second, then the system restarted. I have a backup of the mbr using easy bcd. What will I do? Did my little experiment failed? Do I have to reformat my system and do it over again? Please help, if you need more details, just ask in the comments. Thank you very much.

update I managed to boot to windows 7. I just changed the sata mode to ahci. My problem now is how to add xp to the choices of os to boot from. And will I still be able to boot to xp if sata mode is ahci? Do I have to switch the sata mode from ahci to ide everytime I try to boot to each of the os?

Answer 1

Press F8 and choose under advanced "Disable automatic restart on system failure".

Hopefully this will show you a bit more information.

I have not installed mint/Wubi so I can't comment on how that is running, but it sounds to me something went wrong with the MBR reinstall. After typing those two commands, try to run the GUI again - it does more than just those two commands.

I will try to help further if you can detail the contents of the BSOD.

update to your update!...

Windows XP is AHCI compliant, but it is much easier to do when installing - I have never tried to do it after, but there are many guides if you Google it.

I know you will not want to do this, but the easiest thing will be to take a backup of your data, reinstall XP, then install Windows 7.

However, going back to our question, you need to edit the Windows 7 boot loader. The easiest way to do this is to use the excellent free tool EasyBCD (A GUI program for BCDEdit).

But, Windows 7 is good... I know many people who do what you do and then never use the XP installation. Have you taken a look at either full on virtualising it, or just using XP Mode?

Answer 2

If you're seeing the "Starting windows" screen you're past the realm of the MBR -- I would doubt that it is truly the MBR that you are having the problem with (or at least, not for that specific issue). Usually these sort of problems come about when the SATA mode is changed post-install (for example IDE/RAID/AHCI).

The STOP code contained in the BSOD and any faulting modules would be useful in debugging this issue.

EDIT: You mention that you now managed to boot into Windows 7 with AHCI, but not Windows XP. This probably indicates that you need to install your SATA drivers on Windows XP, but Windows XP is still notoriously picky for changing SATA mode when it's already been configured to use something else. You could try it, but your best bet would be a fresh install of XP, integrated with your SATA drivers, on the mode you're wanting.