boot / boot.ini question

[Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras]

Hi!

Our XPe system has two CF cards, connected to IDE, one is user
accessible and contains the XPe and our software, to be field
upgradable, the sedond one is not user accessible and only is a data
storage.

Both cards fixed disk, both FAT32 formatted and bootable.

The internal card is equipped with command.com, just to boot into DOS
and show a message on the screen to turn off, insert the external
card, and turn on again

Now we use a mainboard with the nasty functionality to automatically
change the boot priority when a boot device is not available, and NOT
to change it back again. So whenever the device is turned on without
the external CF in it, it will only boot from the internal card, and
the only chance is to enter BIOS setup to readjust the boot prio.

Now my idea is to equip the internal CF also with ntldr and ntdetect
and a boot ini that enables windows boot from the external card in
case the boot priority has changed; but for some reason I do not get
this to work.
Is multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=... not correct?

Any hint is highly welcome!

Thank you, and with best regards

Ralph.

 

[Martin Grossen, eMVP [AVNET Silica]]

Hi Ralph

note, that the partition is starting with a 0.
So when you want to boot from a second disk, single partition,
you need to have following boot.ini:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINDOWS=...



--

Martin Grossen, eMVP

AVNET EMG Silica
Franchise Manager Microsoft Embedded Europe

Your competent partner for Microsoft Embedded licencing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[KM]

Partition number in ArcPath start from 1. Primary partition being numbered first and then logical drives:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102873.


Ralph,

What exactly didn't work in your scenario?
Do you get to ntldr phase? (if you set non-zero timeout in the boot.ini on that card you are supposed to get to the ntldr menu)

Please keep in mind that with the backup solution you are trying to come up with it will require user manual interaction to switch
to another ArcPath at the boot time. My point is being that it doesn't seem to be an automatic way to fix the problem without user
has to do something at boot.