Unable install Win 7 on seperate partition

I'm trying to install Windows 7 Professional on a system with the 2nd hard drive partition - 100GB in size. I used Paragon Partition Manger to create the two partitions, formatting both as NTFS.

Windows XP isproperly installed on the first partition. When I try to install Windows 7 Pro on the second partition it extracts the files & installs fine right up to the point of rebooting, then gives me this error on rebooting:
:
File: \windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc000000d
The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

I've purchased four Win 7 Pro license keys from MS and already sucessfully loaded Windows 7 Pro on three computers with a single partition HDD, using the DVD (downloaded from digitalrivers) w/o any problems - so one would think the DVD itself is OK.

Any ideas why I can install Windows 7 Pro (using the same DVD) just fine on a single (simple) partition but get this error when trying to install on a seperate partition?
TIA
Ted

Are you allowing Windows 7 to set up the separate 100MB partition it uses for boot-up? That may solve it. I found that when I used partition software I could not get a good install regardless of how I configured it. So I just use the partition setup utility in the Windows 7 install process, then it works fine.

Windows 7 can be quite finicky when it comes to doing the install, for some reason.

This 100MB partition is not mandentory.

I don't have the 100MB partition. In fact I find it sad that Microsoft makes this the only configuration if you don't already have the partitions created.

If you create one full size partition or atleast one large enough (atleast 20GB) to support windows 7 first, all the boot files will be placed in a folder on the same drive as the install. I can only think of one use and that is a multiboot config where you want to hide Windows 7 from the other OS's. However it uses up one of the primary partition's. When only 4 primary partitions are allowed.

Hi onetdbear - Welcome to w7forums

Can you try using Paragon Partition Manager and marking the 100GB partition active before installation and see if this helps.

Note:
Please make the bootable media for Paragon so that you can make changes to the partitions. If the install doesn't work this way, you may need to mark the original drive as active again.