Dual booting XP

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SchoolTech - 08 Jun 2006 23:35 GMT

I have a SATA drive and an IDE drive (primary slave) that I want to use
as dual boot.

The problem seems to be working out the syntax for the boot.ini file,
and an article I found on MS's website implies the XP bootloader ntldr
can't really handle drives on different controllers too well.

Anyway. The SATA drive is multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
The IDE drive? Tried a few combinations but not one that works. In fact
it may not be able to. It seems all that can be done is to change the
BIOS Settings to tell a different drive to boot, then that drive becomes
C drive from Windows' point of view and the other drive is accessible as D.

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John John - 09 Jun 2006 03:34 GMT

Boot with the Windows XP CD and launch the Recovery Console then use
bootcfg to querry the installations. Try any of these:

bootcfg /scan

bootcfg /rebuild

bootcfg /add

See here for more information:

A discussion about the Bootcfg command and its uses
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291980

John

> I have a SATA drive and an IDE drive (primary slave) that I want to use
> as dual boot.
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> BIOS Settings to tell a different drive to boot, then that drive becomes
> C drive from Windows' point of view and the other drive is accessible as D.

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SchoolTech - 09 Jun 2006 06:27 GMT

> Boot with the Windows XP CD and launch the Recovery Console then use
> bootcfg to querry the installations. Try any of these:
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
>> becomes C drive from Windows' point of view and the other drive is
>> accessible as D.

Thanks
Normally when I have installed Windows it detects the dual installation,
so I'm assuming in this case, for reasons mentioned, it can't detect the
IDE drive when it boots off the SATA.

But I'll try the suggestions.

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John John - 09 Jun 2006 12:19 GMT

>> Boot with the Windows XP CD and launch the Recovery Console then use
>> bootcfg to querry the installations. Try any of these:
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
>
> But I'll try the suggestions.

It should have detected it when the second Windows installation took
place. If it can't detect and boot it with the ntldr you should try
using a third party boot manager like BootItNG or XOSL. After rereading
your first post one sentence makes it quite apparent that the
installation wasn't performed as a normal Microsoft dual boot setup.
You said:

"It seems all that can be done is to change the BIOS Settings to tell a
different drive to boot, then that drive becomes C drive from Windows'
point of view and the other drive is accessible as D."

To me that makes it evident that both operating systems are installed as
independent systems. In a Microsoft multi-boot there is only one system
partition and the second installation would not or should not boot if
the drive containing the system partition were turned off in the BIOS.
I don't know in what order you installed these operating systems but
probably when you did the IDE installation you should have done the F6
routine during the setup to have Windows see the SATA drive. I think
that at this juncture you might be better off using a boot manager.

John

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Calvin - 10 Jun 2006 01:51 GMT

Hi John,

> It should have detected it when the second Windows installation took
> place. If it can't detect and boot it with the ntldr you should try
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> routine during the setup to have Windows see the SATA drive. I think
> that at this juncture you might be better off using a boot manager.

I suspect you are right - reading what the OP has said, my suspicion is
that each OS was set up independently on their own HDD. I also suspect
that each drive now probably has a primary partition marked as active -
which can cause considerable confusion for the system during a boot.

Calvin.

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