Clive in Kent @hotmail.com> said:
Hi all,
I've got two hard drives on my system, one running XP Home and the other
running XP Pro, on two different user accounts. My problem is that on
start up I'm not given the option on which to boot up from. I have to go
into the BIOS each time and change the disc boot-up preference there and
then re-start which is a real pain.
What I would ideally like to do is to have a short-cut on my desktop on
each OS which would enable me to shutdown and re-start booting up in the
other. Is this a possibility??
Hoping I've made sense!!!
Clive Holden (Kent UK)
(Clive later states that the drives are designated C: & I:, the latter drive
cannibalized from a defunct machine)
Clive:
I'm not sure if a simple edit of the boot.ini file as suggested by Ron
Sommer will work in this case. If it does, fine. But let me give you another
possible course of action for your consideration.
Consider equipping your desktop computer with two removable hard drives.
These mobile rack devices are two-part affairs - the rack itself and the
inner tray (caddy) in which the hard drive resides that slides into the
rack. They come in all-aluminum models or a combination of aluminum-plastic
ranging in price from about $15 to $50. Naturally, your
desktop computer case will need two 5¼" bays that are available to house the
mobile racks. Mobile racks come in various versions, depending upon whether
the hard drive to be housed is an IDE/ATA, SATA, or SCSI device. A Google
search for “removable hard drive mobile racks” will result in a wealth of
information on these products and their vendors. I'm aware of many users
(including ourselves) who have been using inexpensive plastic mobile racks
without any problems
whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is no industry standard involving the
design and construction of the racks nor the inner trays that contain the
hard drive.Consequently, there is (usually) no interchangeability of these
trays among the various manufacturers of mobile racks. Indeed, there is
frequently no interchangeability of the inner trays among different models
from the same manufacturer. This lack of interchangeability may not be an
issue if the user (like yourself) will be purchasing a particular model of
mobile rack for a single computer, however, if the user will have access to
other computers, he or she may want to settle on a specific brand and model
of mobile rack that will provide for tray interchangeability amongst
different computers.
Installing the mobile racks is no more difficult than installing any 5 1/4"
device such as an optical drive. Using them is simplicity itself. As noted
above, the HD resides in a removable tray that easily slides in & out of the
rack. A simple keylock that the user can turn ON or OFF determines whether
that drive will be active in the system. So in your case, if you want to
boot to your C: drive you simply turn the keylock to its ON position. Ditto
with your I: drive. No need to get into the BIOS or use a boot menu. And the
drive that is not in use is both electrically & physically detached from the
system, another advantage.
And consider another enormous advantage of removable hard drives... Now you
can have an *unlimited* number of hard drives at your disposal, to be used
for any purpose you desire. In most cases you can purchase additional
trays/caddies for your mobile rack and thus have at hand as many hard drives
as your needs & pocketbook will allow.
There is no performance negative to using removable hard drives - they will
operate identically to an internal HD.
Should you have only one available 5 1/4" bay on your desktop computer case
to house a mobile rack you could still use this hardware configuration to
good advantage. Although you didn't say, I assume your two hard drives are
PATA ones. In that case you would connect the removable HD as Primary Master
and your other internal HD as Secondary Master. So when the removable HD is
ON, the system will boot to that drive, when OFF, the system will boot to
the internal HD.
We've been using removable hard drives for about five years now and we've
helped many, many users install these devices. I can virtually guarantee
that once you begin working with this hardware arrangement, your only regret
will be that your previous computer(s) weren't so equipped.
Anna
