Won't dual boot. XP- Win7

[NotquiteanooB]

A buddy has a Dual boot system. Xp on a single SataHDD; and Win7 on a Raid 1 dual SataHDD setup. Xp boots okay. Win 7 won't boot. Looking at the Raid HDD's I see both show up in "My Computer" PLUS 2 partitions on each of the Raid drives. Normally under Raid 1 I think I should only see 1 drive as the other is a mirror of the first drive. When questioning who did the OS install; I was told the first partition in the raid setup is for the Raid drivers !!?? The second partition is the OS. Is this possible; required; or even necessary ?? I think the boot is looking for the OS, but only finding the drivers, when it hits the first partition ?
I use Raid 1 in my PC's but have never had a separate partition for drivers. I just set Raid in BIOS and load the drivers after loading the Win7 OS. ( For XP it's F6 before the OS loads)
His board is ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3. The Win7 OS disk has the raid drivers slipstreamed onto the disk.!?
Anybody got info on dual boot systems, and/or the need for a separate partition for drivers?

 

[postmortemIA]

First, what you have written is barely readable. It does not answer most important questions:
-which is boot drive
-where is windows 7 boot loader: is it on xp partition, or on raid1 storage
-how are you trying to boot to windows 7

And no, you don't need "partition for drivers"

 

[NotquiteanooB]

During POSTing there is a message to use F8 and select which OS system you want. Drop down menu has option to select XP or Win7. Xp boots when selected and Win7 doesn't boot when it's selected. I assume after XP is selected from the menu. 'boot.ini' for XP takes over. In the case of selecting Win7, 'boot.ini' is either not working or it's looking for the OS in the wrong partition of the Raid array. The Raid array looks like it might be Raid10, not Raid 1; from what I just researched.
Will try a reload of Win 7 , without partitioning the drives and see if it boots okay.
Thanks for the help.

 

[postmortemIA]

Windows 7 does not use 'legacy' XP boot loader. It has its own boot loader that looks and behaves differently. File boot.ini works for up to XP. Vista and Win7 have newer boot loaders. Sign that partition has this boot loader is presence of hidden folder 'Boot'.

Have you tried to boot from windows 7 partition directly? This can be accomplished by setting its drive in BIOS as first choice for boot drive, or use F10 (commonly) to boot from any device of your choice.

 

[NotquiteanooB]

Thank you again " pmIA"; I shall try your suggestion to access it directly via bios or F10.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

What order did you install the OS's?

XP then 7 minimizes any boot loader related issues. Other way around & XP overwrites 7's boot record thing.

Found that out the not so fun way.

 

[NotquiteanooB]

XP was first. Weeks later Win 7 was added.

 

[NotquiteanooB]

SOLVED.... The Raid drivers on the mobo CD-Rom are not for the 890 chipset. (Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3) A download of the correct drivers allowed me to redefine and rebuild the Raid1 array.
Simple fix for such a bitch of a mess.