Dual boot question

[NCBill]

I am using OSL 2000 as a dual boot manager. I am running two separate
physical drives on a Dell 4400 Pentium IV machine. I have Windows XP
running on both drives. When I am in the drive that is the "master"
drive, I can see both drives in Explorer. The "master" drive is C, and
the "slave" drive is E with the CD being on D.

If I boot into the "slave" drive, it comes up as C, which is as it
should be, and the CD is again D. However, the "master" drive doesn't
appear at all in Explorer.

If I open the Device Manager, I see both drives listed under Disk
Drives. One drive is listed as in location 0(0). It can be
uninstalled, but the icon to disable is missing. The box under "device
usage" is blanked out.

The other drive is listed as in location 1(1). It can be uninstalled
and in addition, there is an icon to disable the drive. Under "device
usage" there is the option to enable or disable the drive.

The primary and secondary channels of the IDE controllers behave the
same way. The primary may be uninstalled, but not disabled. The
secondary may also be disabled.

The drivers are identical, but there IS a difference when I click
"advanced settings." For the primary channel, the current transfer mode
is Ultra DMA Mode 6 for both Device 0 and Device 1.

For the secondary channel, the current transfer mode is Ultra DMA Mode 2
for Device 0 and "Not applicable" for Device 1.

If I go to Disk Management, I can see both disks, but the "master" disk
shows up with no ID, and when I try to explore the disk, the choice is
grayed out.

Any ideas on how to access the disk?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I am using OSL 2000 as a dual boot manager. I am running
two separate physical drives on a Dell 4400 Pentium IV machine.
I have Windows XP running on both drives.

Sorry. This question comes up so often that I have just
ignored the solution. But the solution doesn't have to do
with xOSL - which brings me to ask "Why are you using
xOSL when you could be using the standard WinXP boot
manager to do your dual-booting?" As a matter of fact,
since the OSes are on separate hard drives, why don't
you just switch from one OS to the other by resetting the
HD boot order in the BIOS? (I wrote "HD boot order",
not simply "boot order", which is something else.) By
simply putting one HD or the other at the head of the
HD boot order, you can control which HD is called "rdisk(0)"
in the boot.ini file, and thereby which HD's "active"
partition controls booting. Otherwise, if you don't like
diddling in the BIOS, you can just use 2 entries in the
boot.ini file of the HD which is at the head of the HD boot
order (by default this is the "Master" on IDE channel 0),
and you can select one or the other of the entries from the
menu which apears on the screen at boot time.

*TimDaniels*
time.

 

[NCBill]

The reason I didn't use the WinXP Boot Manager is because when I went
to Microsoft.com to try to figure out how to do a dual boot, the
instructions were so incomplete and/or undecipherable that I gave up.
No one had ever suggested even the existence of the boot manager.

Now, when I enter Boot Manager in the help and support center search,
I get 15 results, none of which describe how to use the boot manager.
This is typical of microsoft - their support is so totally screwed up
that I generally give up before I find an answer. For example,
Article ID 306559 is entitled How to Create a Multiple Boot system in
Windows XP, but in fact, it only gives advice for what order to
install the different operating systems.

Article ID 289022 supposedly describes how to edit the boot.ini file,
but nowhere in the article does it describe what the various terms
are, such as below. What does multi mean? How about rdisk? How do I
decide what numbers to enter? Does this mean that XP Pro is on disk
1, partition 1 and 2000 Pro is on a separate disk (0) and on the
second partition of that disk?

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional"
/fastdetect.

So, thanks for the advice, but I have no idea how to use it. I know
it is possible to modify the boot.ini file, but have no idea how.

Bill

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Article ID 289022 supposedly describes how to edit the boot.ini file,
but nowhere in the article does it describe what the various terms
are, such as below. What does multi mean? How about rdisk?
How do I decide what numbers to enter?

Yes, the meaning of rdisk() is poorly documented - if at all.
For details of rdisk(), search in groups.google with my name,
the last 6 months, and "meaning of rdisk()" as the title. You'll
see that the argument "x" in "rdisk(x)" refers to the relative
position of the OS's HD in the HD boot order, i.e. the
displacement from the head of the list (of just HDs) in the boot
order. Therefore, "rdisk(0)" refers to the head of the HD boot
order. By *default* the HD boot order is:

Master HD on IDE channel 0,
Slave HD on IDE channel 0,
Master HD on IDE channel 1,
Slave HD on IDE channel 1.

In many BIOSes, this order can be re-arranged by keyboard
input, and the new HD boot order will persist until it is again
re-arranged. If there is no HD at a partitcular position in that
boot order, the BIOS looks for a HD at the next position. For
SATA HDs, I'm not sure what governs the HD boot order, but
experimentation should reveal that for you.

"Partition()" is the OS's partition. The numbering of the
partitions begins with "1", so the first partition is "partition(1)".

The folder name (e.g. "WINDOWS") is the name of the
folder where the OS will be found.

Forget about "multi()" and "disk()", and leave their arguments
"(0)".

The text between double quotes (" ") is arbitrary, and you
can set that to anything that has meaning to you. At boot time,
each entry will be represented on the screen by the text that is
between the double quotes of the entry in the boot.ini file.

The timeout value is the no. of seconds that you are given
to make a selection if there are two or more entries under
the line "[operating systems]". The two entries will sit on the
screen at boot time for that no. of seconds before the boot
manager will assume you've fallen asleep and it will go ahead
and boot the entry in the "default=" entry.

If, during installation of one WinXP, the installer sees
another partition with a Windows OS, it will set boot.ini up
for you to dual-boot. Running bootcfg in the command prompt
window of WinXP will do the same thing. But if the OS that
is observed by the installer resides on what is being called
partition "C:", it will make the OS that it is installing reside in
a partition that it names "D:", and the 2nd OS will always call
its partition "D:". If that is a problem for you, just hide the 1st
partition by unplugging the data cable of its HD (since you
intend to have the OSes on separate HDs). Thereafter, you
can run bootcfg to ammend the boot.ini file, or you can do it
yourself by using Notepad. I prefer Notepad.

At boot time, the MBR of the HD at the head of the HD boot
order gets control, and it passes control to the boot sector of
the "active" primary partition on that HD. The boot sector looks
for ntldr (the boot loader/manager) on that HD and passes control
to it. Ntldr then looks for the boot.ini file, and off we go!

Since only a primary partition can have a boot sector, the
boot files (ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com) must be in a
primary partition. BUT... the OS can be in a primary OR an
extended partition! You just have to know how logical drives
are enumerated in an extended partition (i.e. the value of
"partition()"), by knowing that the primary partitions are
enumerated first, then the logical drives in the extended partition
are enumerated. Thus, the 1st logical drive (i.e. first "partition")
in an extended partition of a HD that has 2 primary partitions
in addition to the one extended partition, is "partition(3)" - even
if the extended partition is the 2nd partition on the HD..

Now you know more about the WinXP boot procedure than
99% of PC users, including the "gurus".

*TimDaniels*

 

[NCBill]

Tim,

No time to read and digest all this at the moment, but I'm sure it
will make everything much clearer when I do. I really appreciate your
help.

Bill

 

[Timothy Daniels]

No time to read and digest all this at the moment, but I'm sure it
will make everything much clearer when I do. I really appreciate
your help.

Well, there's more: The "active" partition.

The MBR of the HD that is selected for booting looks for the
Primary partition that is marked "active" to find the boot sector
which in turn, goes looking for ntldr - which needs the boot.ini file.
So it's important that the right partition be marked "active"
How can you check to see that the correct partition is marked
"active"? Use Disk Manager (rt-clk MyComputer/Manage/
DiskManagement). Rt-clk on the partition that has the boot files.
If the menu has "Mark Partition as Active" grayed out, it's already
"active". If it's not grayed out, click on that selection to mark it
as being "active". The boot.ini file in that partition will now provide
the menu during booting, although the OS, as I previously described,
can be *anywhere* you want it - in another partition on another HD,
if you want.

*TimDaniels*