Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

User discussion and information resource forum for BootIt Bare Metal and BootIt UEFI
Post Reply
dnlathrop
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2012 10:21 pm

Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

Post by dnlathrop »

I have a system with BIU (don't remember what version) that used to allow booting into Linux and Win7. The efi boot partition and the OS partitions are all on the same drive.

I installed WinXP (I know, almost archaic) using these steps: (1) created and formatted a partition for the OS, (2) created a boot menu item to boot from that partition, (3) hid all other partitions on that drive, (4) went to the boot menu and attempt to boot the not-yet-installed OS, getting a message there is nothing to boot; (5) restarted the machine and installed the OS.

After completing the install, I attempted to boot from a USB stick (with BIU v 1.17) to reactivate BIU but I could not do it. BIU displayed an error message that it could not open BootIt.dat.

How can I recover from this?

Since nothing else worked, I used another machine to copy the BootIt.dat file in the rfi/bootit directory into both the efi directory and the root directory of the USB stick. This allowed me to boot into BIU on the stick but it was of no help -- its boot menu was blank and it did not give me the opportunity to reactivate BIU on the hard drive.
Eric
Posts: 224
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:53 pm
Location: France

Re: Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

Post by Eric »

For sure, Windows XP cannot boot on UEFI. So you would have to enable legacy mode and use BIBM instead of BIU.
Thus, Windows XP cannot be installed on a GPT disk. You should check that the installation of XP didn't change the partionnement of the disk to MBR.
Eric
Posts: 224
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:53 pm
Location: France

Re: Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

Post by Eric »

To recover your old installation, you can:
- ensure that the disk is partionned in GPT,
- delete the EFI system partition,
- reinstall completely BIU,
- use fixboot.tbs to recreate the folder in the EFI partition for Win7,
- recreate the menu in BIU.
dnlathrop
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2012 10:21 pm

Re: Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

Post by dnlathrop »

Eric, thanks for the reply. As you suspected, the disk did not show as GPT.

I will go back to BIBM so these three OS can coexist.
Eric
Posts: 224
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:53 pm
Location: France

Re: Installed another OS; now BootIt is a mess -- how do I recover?

Post by Eric »

You may need to change (or check) some settings in Win7 so it can boot in legacy mode (drive letter C: correctly assign, BCD configuration correctly set, file bootmgr present, directory \Boot present).
Post Reply