Can you boot XP from primary slave device?

[Robert Nicholson]

By setting the boot priority is it still possible to boot from the
primary slave drive?

I was able to install it on this drive but I cannot get the machine to
boot from it.

I'm given HDD0, HDD1, HDD2, HDD3 and I've tried all of them and it
doesn't
boot.

Which one of the above corresponds to primary slave?

Can XP only boot from the primary master?

 

[R. McCarty]

The partition needs to have an "Active" attribute applied to it.
This can be done by a number of 3rd party disk tools, such
as Partition Magic.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Or System Commander!

Y.

The partition needs to have an "Active" attribute applied to it.
This can be done by a number of 3rd party disk tools, such
as Partition Magic.

 

[Robert Nicholson]

So, I did what you suggested but my machine still refuses to boot from it.

I have two drives.

One has a primary partition with win 98 SE.

That is the primary master, and it's primary slave is the drive I want to boot.

This drive I'm trying to boot has XP installed initially from CD (prior to reboot)
on a primary partition FAT32

In the BIOS I can select HDD0, HDD1, HDD2, HDD3 as the boot device but
regardless of which one I choose in priority it still boots into Windows 98 SE.

 

[t.cruise]

The master drive C is needed to boot first, even if Windows XP isn't
installed on it. The Windows XP setup/install puts some files on the C
drive, such as the boot.ini, ntldr, etc. If you aren't using a third party
boot utility, and your jumpers are set correctly for master and slave,
Windows XP setup should run, and ask where you want to install Windows XP,
and you'd select the letter of the slave drive, Windows XP should install
there, and after the install is completed, your system should power on to a
boot menu asking if you want to boot into Windows or Windows XP. Windows XP
will be the default operating system if you let the seconds tick by and do
nothing. Once booted into Windows XP you can right click My Computer, left
click Properties, click the Advanced tab, under the Startup and Recovery
heading click the Settings button, change the default operating system if
you want, or leave it at Windows XP, and change the time to list the
operating systems on the boot menu to 0, if you just want to boot into
Windows XP. I had a dual boot of Windows 98 SE on my C drive, and Windows
XP on my Drive, without any problems. I chose to have the Windows XP drive
formatted FAT 32, because I wanted the files to be seen in Windows Explorer
if I booted into Windows 98. Windows 98 can't see files on an NTFS
formatted drive. Eventually though, I deleted Windows XP from the C drive
(being careful to leave the few Windows XP files in the C root directory)
and used the C drive for storage or for installing new programs while in
Windows XP.

 

[Alex Nichol]

By setting the boot priority is it still possible to boot from the
primary slave drive?

I was able to install it on this drive but I cannot get the machine to
boot from it.

I'm given HDD0, HDD1, HDD2, HDD3 and I've tried all of them and it
doesn't
boot.

Which one of the above corresponds to primary slave?

I'd guess HDD1 - but it is a matter for the BIOS.

Can XP only boot from the primary master?

The boot process starts with the BIOS accessing the disk it is told to
(a recent BIOS should allow this to be any IDE drive). It reads the
Master boot record from that and enters the MBR code there - so first
possibility is that the slave has never had MBR code written to it.

That then selects the partition marked as active (so the partition may
not have the marker, though if it is the only one on the drive that
should be taken by default), and control handled to the boot files
there.

THis now depends on just how you did the XP install: if it was when you
booted the master drive the boot files would be put there, and the
Windows (only) put on the other drive, which would be treated as having
a later drive letter, like D:.

You could fix these matters by copying the ntldr file from the root of
the master drive (or from the XP CD in the i386 folder) into the root of
the slave drive, then booting the XP CD and taking the R - Repair
option.

First read up in Help and Support, search on "Recovery Console
Commands".

Then use the
Fixmbr \Device\Hard_Disk1
or as appropriate
and the Fixboot and
BootCFG /Rebuild
commands - you may then have to move the resulting boot.ini fie to the
slave drive too.

 

[Donald McDaniel]

So, I did what you suggested but my machine still refuses to boot
from it.

I have two drives.

One has a primary partition with win 98 SE.

That is the primary master, and it's primary slave is the drive I
want to boot.

This drive I'm trying to boot has XP installed initially from CD
(prior to reboot)
on a primary partition FAT32

In the BIOS I can select HDD0, HDD1, HDD2, HDD3 as the boot device but
regardless of which one I choose in priority it still boots into
Windows 98 SE.

When you installed Windows XP, it should have created a boot menu for you
from which you should be able to boot to either OS.

 

[Donald McDaniel]

The master drive C is needed to boot first, even if Windows XP isn't
installed on it. The Windows XP setup/install puts some files on the
C drive, such as the boot.ini, ntldr, etc. If you aren't using a
third party boot utility, and your jumpers are set correctly for
master and slave, Windows XP setup should run, and ask where you want
to install Windows XP, and you'd select the letter of the slave
drive, Windows XP should install there, and after the install is
completed, your system should power on to a boot menu asking if you
want to boot into Windows or Windows XP. Windows XP will be the
default operating system if you let the seconds tick by and do
nothing. Once booted into Windows XP you can right click My
Computer, left click Properties, click the Advanced tab, under the
Startup and Recovery heading click the Settings button, change the
default operating system if you want, or leave it at Windows XP, and
change the time to list the operating systems on the boot menu to 0,
if you just want to boot into Windows XP. I had a dual boot of
Windows 98 SE on my C drive, and Windows XP on my Drive, without any
problems. I chose to have the Windows XP drive formatted FAT 32,
because I wanted the files to be seen in Windows Explorer if I booted
into Windows 98. Windows 98 can't see files on an NTFS formatted
drive. Eventually though, I deleted Windows XP from the C drive
(being careful to leave the few Windows XP files in the C root
directory) and used the C drive for storage or for installing new
programs while in Windows XP.

Doesn't anyone use paragraphs to organize their thoughts anymore?

 

[Robert Nicholson]

None of what you are suggesting is happening.

Specifically all system boot files are being put on the slave drive
and not the master.

If I install to the slave I can see boot.ini etc on the slave drive.
Then it wants to reboot
after doing the initial install from CD. Upon rebooting it boots into
the C: because for
some reason I cannot boot into D:

This is confirmed because whenever I remove ntldr etc from the D:
drive it will complain
upon boot that it's now missing so that confirms that the BIOS has
correctly tried to boot
from the slave drive but for some reason even when I've marked the
partition as active
in Partition Magic it will not boot into the initial partition that XP
is installed into.

 

[Guest]

have you ever tried editing the boot.ini file

it look something like this

[boot loader
timeout=
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINN
[operating systems
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetec
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetec

if the timeout is set to 0 and the default is set to partition that contains the window 98, then you will never be able to dual boot
try increase the timeout to longer time such as timeout=20.

 

[Guest]

So the best solution so far is that it *should have* created a boot menu. Haven't seen an answer to this - did XP not create one? Seems odd if it did not. At any rate, betcha wish you had a Startup Disk control panel. Shame Microsoft wasn't able to swipe that one from Apple yet.

 

[Guest]

So the best solution so far is that it *should have* created a boot menu. Haven't seen an answer to this - did XP not create one? Seems odd if it did not. At any rate, betcha wish you had a Startup Disk control panel. Shame Microsoft wasn't able to swipe that one from Apple yet.

Can Windows XP be called a modern operating system, when it continues to rely on those ugly, DOS-style boot menus?