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Can't access System Recovery or boot to Win-7 after installing XP

 
 
problemoo problemoo is offline
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      12-17-2011
I am in a bit of problem... please read.

I recently created a new partition with 200GB of space on my Windows 7 64bit (HP Elite) PC system. I installed Windows XP Professional on that new partition (trying to create dual OS). After Windows XP was installed, I was unable to find "Windows 7" as a boot option under "Startup and Recovery"... I could only see Windows XP Professional. I went to Disk Management and right clicked on the partition where my Windows 7 OS was under, and chose "Make partition active"... I got a warning system MAY not be able to boot, but I chose to proceed anyways. I tried restarting and got an error "BOOTMGR is missing / Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" ... I tried pressing F11 after restarting to get into "System Recovery" but it would go directly to the error message. I was still be able to access everything else during boot except "System Recovery" such as BIOS, etc.

I re-installed Windows XP Professional on the same partition... and was now able to get into the Windows XP Pro OS again. I'm still unable to access "System Recovery" when booting. F11 option is being bypassed and going directly into XP OS. This is my first concern, how do I get "System Recovery" to get working again? It used to work before as I re-installed Windows 7 couple of months ago. I can still see "FACTORY IMAGE" drive in My Computer (could be on a different drive letter than before). And second, how do I boot to my original Windows 7 OS (C-drive seems intact and all Win-7 system files are there)?

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
 
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hellknight hellknight is offline
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      12-20-2011
When you want to install a multi-OS system, always install them oldest to newest.
Windows XP doesn't "know" win7, and has thus overwritten your computers MBR (Master Boot Record) with a new MBR, that only lists winXP.
To fix this, check this article, and scroll down to "Create Boot Loader".
If you follow those instructions, you should be able to set up a bootloader that lets you choose which OS you wish to start.
Should you encounter any issues, just let us know
 
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problemoo problemoo is offline
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      12-20-2011
Thanks for the help. So basically I fixed the problem by downloading "windows 7 recovery disk" torrent and burning it onto a disc. I then restarted the computer with the disc inside, and the system recovery was able to fix the problem after 2 restarts.

Right now, the only problem I have is I'm unable to access system recovery (without disc) when pressing F11 at boot screen.
 
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