Windows 7, xp and mac osx 86 - help!!!!!!

[olg207]

Ok heres my problem. i tried to install mac osx 86 yesterday. i changed the format of my 3rd hard drive (80gb) just for mac. i have 2 more hard drives in - one with Windows 7 and the other with xp. now the thing is, i didnt install the mac in the same night. i formatted my hard drive (mac one) to mac standard, and set it as active. this was late at night, so i turned off my pc and woke up early the next morning to install mac. but it didnt install right, because its a sata hard drive.

so the issue is i cannot boot into any os because i set that harddrive as active - how do i reactivate windows 7. not to bovard about xp - when i get into windows 7 then i can sought out xp, but for now i need to boot into windows 7.

I want to avoid a reinstall. I do have the windows 7 disk and xp disk at hand. my optical drives dont like windows 7 disk at the moment - wont boot from them, so if we can, can we use the xp disk to fix the mbr of vista, or activate it.

 

[Ian]

The easiest way would be to do a startup repair from the Windows 7 disk, as it happens, I wrote an article on this just a few hours ago (here). Although if you can't boot from your W7 disk then that is a problem.

You could try something similar using "fixmbr" from the XP recovery console (if you can boot from that CD ok).

 

[olg207]

hi i managed to finally boot into xp, but reinstalling the ntldr files. so i can boot into xp. i tried the fixmbr and that doesnt seem to work. and when i was lucky enough for my windows 7 cd to work no windows 7 installations appeared, what can i do?

 

[Ian]

hi i managed to finally boot into xp, but reinstalling the ntldr files. so i can boot into xp. i tried the fixmbr and that doesnt seem to work. and when i was lucky enough for my windows 7 cd to work no windows 7 installations appeared, what can i do?

What happened when you tried to do a startup repair on Windows 7, was the drive detected but not the installation of W7?

 

[olg207]

no no drives were detected - and no installations. but the hard drives are firmly connected, and are recognied in the bios.

 

[olg207]

ok i have sought of fixed it. i can now boot into windows 7 . i did this by eventually getting my optical drive to work, and then going into the command prompt. and typed a list of random bcdedit commands, and one or more of them worked.
but 2 problems occur, first is it doesnt give me the option to boot to xp anymore, and the second is, the boot gui is of vista. the normal green bars going across the tube. what do i do now?

 

[Ian]

As you've done so many things, I'm not sure where to begin to fix the problem

You might be able to sort your boot menu out by using EasyBCD:

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

 

[olg207]

Ok thanks for all the help. I solved the vista boot screen problem by using comand prompt, and followed this link, (at the bottom of my reply). but i still have no option for xp. would easy bcd help this. This is the only problem i have now. thank god!!!!!!

http://www.askvg.com/fix-windows-7-boot-screen-changed-to-vista-styled/