boot disk question

[bill]

if I change the boot.ini file it sees the 2nd drive which is connected
to the MB IDE port as drive 1 and the 1st connected to the PCI card as
drive 0.

How does the system determine the drive ordinals?

the MB port is shown as the first drives detected on the boot screens

the PCI port comes up on the next detection screen.

 

[bill]

I have 2 drives.
the 1st boot drive is connected to the MB ide port
the 2nd connected to a PCI ide port card.
I did a clean install on the 2nd with only it connected to the MB
port.
i then reconnect the first to the PCI port.
It booted to the 2nd as I expected.

I then connected the 1st to the MB port with the 2nd disconnected and
booted.

When I went back to the 2nd connected to the MB port and the 1st to
the PCI port it boots to the 1st which I don't want.

I can't get it to boot to the 1st with both connected now regardless
of which port it is connected to.

I am not trying to do a dual boot.

What I expected is that it would boot to the drive connected to the
primary MB port which it did until I booted to the 1st drive.

Now it won't boot to the 2nd with the first connected regardless of
which port it is connected to.

How do I get to what I want without modifying the boot.ini to make it
a dual boot????

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?_db_=B4=AF`=B7.._=3E=3C=29=29=29=BA]

there are two commands
that you can use via the
recovery console (via
your windows cd):

fixboot or
bootcfg

here are the instructions:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...en-us/recovery_console_overview.mspx?mfr=true

at the command prompt
you can look up commands
by entering: help

or look them up
at microsoft.com
knowledge base's.


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..

 

[bill]

Thanks BUT

that isn't the issue.

I have modified the boot.ini BUT

I need to know why the system selects the drive on the PCI controller
as drive 0 instead of the one on the MB controller.

OR better, how the system determines the drive ordinal.

the systems on both drives were clean installed the same way
both connected to the MB controller with no other drives connected.

so the only difference is the controller they are currently connected
to. The MB controller WAS drive 0. Now it appears to be drive 1.

with the mod to boot.ini I can select either and I guess I can modify
it to always select drive 1 which is on the MB port.

I don't understand why the drive on MB port is now drive 1 when it was
drive 0.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?_db_=B4=AF`=B7.._=3E=3C=29=29=29=BA]

oh, i see.

i don't have any experience
with this, sorry.




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<)))º>·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·.. ><)))º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><)))º>

..

 

[Ron Badour]

I suspect that the second drive has a partition marked as active. My XP
computer with two drives in it is not hooked up at the present so I cannot
confirm my suspicion nor work out a solution. I would think you would have
to change an active setting using Disk Management. If you cannot figure it
out using the native tool, try this third party program: BootIt Next
Generation is available from:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html and it does partitioning,
makes a compressed image, does many other partitioning chores and is a boot
manager. It is not quite as easy to use as Partition Magic but it is half
the cost and has more features. Unlike the crippled PMagic demo, BING is a
*full function* demo you can try for FREE for 30 days. The web site has a
lot of support articles.

 

[bill]

OK, based on the way I created these systems, both drives are active
partitions.

BUT, how does the system decide which is drive 0 and which is drive 1.

is it written in the MBR at some point because I would say both were
drive 0 at one point. I thought it depended on the cable/controller it
was on. But it doesn't seem to matter any more. I think at one point
it did.

I handled it in the boot.ini file but it is bugging the crap out of me
cause I don't understand it.