Windows Vista bootloader repair

As per previous post, I had Windows Vista on C: partition and installed Windows 7 beta build 7057 on a D: partition, upon next boot my Vista boot entry was gone.

I managed to restore Vista boot entry using Windows Vista Recovery Disk from Neosmart.net – kudos to them for making it available as a torrent download – wrote it on a disc and went a couple of time through the automated repair process (see more details here on how to use the recovery disk) and managed to recover both Vista and Windows 7 boot entries, but only Vista is bootable now. I had Vista’s tcpip.sys “fixed” to allow for more half-open connections, and I eventually had to use the console from the recovery options, go into your \Windows\system32\drivers, delete / rename tcpip.sys and copy tcpip.copy (that’s how my backup file was named) as tcpip.sys, as Vista was complaining that tcpip.sys was corrupt.

Trouble is that now with Vista boot entry restored, I cannot boot into Windows 7, the Windows Boot Manager complains with error 0xc0000428, file: \Windows\system32\winload.exe, “Windows cannot very the digital signature for this file”. Now, if I understand correctly from reading this article, it seems that as part of the security checks the Vista Boot Manager is checking various boot files, one of them being winload.exe, which leads me to the conclusion that Vista Boot Manager doesn’t approve of Windows 7 boot files, and same goes the other way around (don’t actually recall the other boot message last night, it was late it could’ve been the same as about on tcpip.sys or this new winload.exe signature thing).

Reading A few more changes from Beta to RC I noticed this change:

25. Dual Boot partition drive letter assignment

For a dual boot configuration for the Beta, the other Windows OS wouldn’t get a drive letter and therefore wouldn’t show up in explorer.  We heard overwhelmingly from Beta customers that the lack of a drive letter was confusing and even caused some to believe that their secondary OS was lost. Assigning the drive letter makes it visible in explorer and aids in navigation across OS installations.

While I’ve noticed in W7 beta the Vista partition was not showing up in Explorer and now in build 7057 was back in, I wonder if this change might have something to do with my issue here… Must be something to do with both Vista and W7 naming C: the partition was being installed on and renaming the other ones – anyways, after lots and lots of googling for Vista and W7 dual-booting and bcdedit command parameters, I’m even more confused and couldn’t find much relevant info, so I’ll give up for now…