Dual Boot - 2 separate Hard Drives - How to?

[Guest]

I have Windows Server 2003 x64 on one drive, and I've installe Windows Vista
RTM on the other. If I configure the BIOS to boot off the Vista drive first,
Vista comes up fine.

But everything I've done with BCDEDIT and VistaBootPro to edit the boot
config in Vista to offer to boot into the legacy OS on the other drive won't
work. All I get is "NTDetect failed".

Of course, if I reconfigure the BIOS to boot off the legacy drive first, the
Windows Server OS comes up fine, but that leaves Vista out of the picture.

I think some enterprising developer should write a whitepaper on how to do
all this stuff. Let's say, erm, "BCDEDIT FOR DUMMIES".

I'd buy it.

 

[Guest]

Try osl2000... or go to www.osloader.com to download...

2 setup... boot in to one os and installl, then reboot with 2 hard drives
installed, with the drive were you installed osl2000, the BIOS should load
osl2000. osl2000 should load all of your hard drives. You might just need to
rename the the drives in osl2000, so you can know which os your loading...

Hope it works!

 

[Steve]

Try osl2000... or go to www.osloader.com to download...

2 setup... boot in to one os and installl, then reboot with 2 hard drives
installed, with the drive were you installed osl2000, the BIOS should load
osl2000. osl2000 should load all of your hard drives. You might just need
to
rename the the drives in osl2000, so you can know which os your loading...

Hope it works!

Sorry to disappoint you, but this program does NOT support Vista. I've tried
it but with no luck at all.
Steve

 

[John Barnes]

Download and install a copy of VistaBootPro or BCDEdit in Vista and with the
Vista drive first, set up a legacy os. After that if it doesn't load, on my
system I have always had to copy the ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini files
from the other drive to the root of the Vista boot drive and adjust the
boot.ini as necessary to point to the NT based drive.

 

[Guest]

That's an intelligent solution, and unfortunately I've already tried it. But,
I'll give it another go and see what happends.
Thanks,
Peter

--
Co-founder, Eggheadcafe.com developer portal:
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
UnBlog:
http://petesbloggerama.blogspot.com

 

[Guest]

John,
Thanks to you, all is now happy in VistaLand. When I switched the drive boot
sequence in the BIOS to start off the Vista drive, I neglected to think that
would change the necessary entries in the boot.ini that resides on the Vista
Drive along with NTLDR etc:

# THE OLD:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
x64 Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons



# THE NEW:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
x64 Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

With rdisk(1) in the new, we are good to go.

Thanks!
Peter





Co-founder, Eggheadcafe.com developer portal:
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
UnBlog:
http://petesbloggerama.blogspot.com