Problem booting from USB

dan_eire

Hey there,

I have a Samsung NC10 Netbook (no cd/dvd drive), with XP Home pre-installed. It came with the 140gb HDD split into 2 equal partitions of 70gb each. I decided i wanted to try and install windows7 on the second partition.

I put windows7 onto a 4gb thumb drive and set the BIOS to look for the usb drive before the harddrive. It booted from the usb thumb drive and tried to install windows7. During the installation, it restarted my netbook and then gave me a blue screen of death (bsod).

I deleted any of the files created by windows7 on my second partition, but everytime i start my netbook now, it comes up with the "windows boot manager". If i select windows, it tries to run some sort of recovery, which warns that it will erase my hdd! So i have to select "previous version of windows" every time, to get into my windows xp.

I checked the boot.ini file and only windows xp is listed. I tried to boot from a usb thumb drive that has windows xp on it (so that i could run bootfix) and it doesn't boot from it and just goes straight to that stupid boot manager screen.

does anyone know how i can get rid of this or make my netbook boot from the usb thumb drive again, so i can re-install xp??

Thanks in advance,

Dan.

Biggins

1. Are you able to see if there is a hidden system drive?
2. than if one is present... have your tried pressing the standard F8 option just after reboot and using (if present) the restore functions for re-setting the whole system back to its "leaving the factory" state?

dan_eire

I'm trying not to restore to factory default. If possible, i'd like to just repair the mbr. I don't want to have to delete everything.

why can't i boot from my usb anymore??

cpu-dude

dan_eire wrote: »

I'm trying not to restore to factory default. If possible, i'd like to just repair the mbr. I don't want to have to delete everything.

why can't i boot from my usb anymore??

With regards to dual booting Windows XP and 7, it's always the easiest to start fresh with 2 clean primary partitions of 80GB each (of the 160GB Hard Drive) or whatever your preference is.

XP to be installed first with the normal MS-DOS / Boot.ini setup.

Then 7 to be installed on the second partition and take over with it's BCD manager (Windows Boot Manager etc).

Your Windows Boot Manager will now looks like this (except with Windows 7, not Vista).



What you should do now is using an XP CD, run the Recovery Console with the commands FIXBOOT and FIXMBR to get back to the original boot.ini setup of just XP. Alternatively, get your hands on the Windows XP files and run the C:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons to install the recovery console into your boot.ini setup.





Then, format your second partition as Primary NTFS and run the install for the USB stick again (assuming it's done with the bootsect command /nt60 - I suggest going through your USB format and setup procedure again - http://url.ie/2qjl )

SELECT DISK 1

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process may take few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

6. Maximize the minimized Command Prompt in the 4th step.Type the following command now:

D:CD BOOT and hit enter.Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.

CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.

7. Type another command given below to update the USB drive with BOOTMGR compatible code.

BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:



Where “H” is your USB drive letter. Once you enter the above command you will see the below message.

8. Copy your Windows 7/Vista DVD contents to the USB flash drive.

Now, you should have two options - earlier version of Windows and Windows 7.