Dual boot system

[Ed Mc]

I have XP with one active, primary, ntfs partition. Can I put a 2nd hard
drive in, then install WindowsME, for a dual boot system? Would ME have
its own fat32 boot partition? Or, would I have to somehow change the
ntfs partition on my #1 hard drive? Thanks for help.

 

[John John]

I have XP with one active, primary, ntfs partition. Can I put a 2nd hard
drive in, then install WindowsME, for a dual boot system? Would ME have
its own fat32 boot partition? Or, would I have to somehow change the
ntfs partition on my #1 hard drive? Thanks for help.

Yes, you can install ME on a second hard disk and it will (must) have
its own FAT32 boot partition. You will not need to change the NTFS
partition on the first hard disk, Windows ME cannot be booted from an
NTFS partition. To dual boot the easiest way would probably be to use a
third party boot manager like BootItNG
http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html (not free) or XOSL
http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm (freeware).

If you don't want to use a third party boot manager you can also change
the System partition from the NTFS drive to the FAT32 drive. It isn't
all that hard to do but it will require that you use the Recovery
Console and that you move/copy some files about from the NTFS to the
FAT32 drive.

John

 

[mayayana]

You can do that. I'm not sure whether the XP
boot loader will see ME on the slave disk. Maybe
someone else will answer that question for certain.
Booting from a slave disk is tricky.
In any case, you'll need to set the ME disk as
master temporarily, in order to install.

If you don't mind doing a little research and
spending some money for a boot/partition/imaging
program (BootIt NG does all that for $35) then you
can install a number of OSs and boot them easily.
You don't need a second disk for that approach. You
just make a disk image of each OS. Once you have disk
images you don't have to cater to each OSs limitations.
(Like installing ME only to drive C of the master disk.)

To start, install each OS, set it up, then make a disk image.
Partition the eventual master disk with 3 primary partitions
and one extended partition full of logical partitions. (Copy
your disk images to the data partitions for convenience.)
With images, using a boot loader, you can write any OS
to any of the 3 partitions at any time and boot it. (Arguably
a much better backup method than System Restore.) You can
even install Linux on one of the logical partitions, to have
4 OSs on one disk.

There are a lot of little "gotchas", though, that you
need to deal with. For instance, ME will install on C drive
as though the other partitions are not there, while XP
will usually do the same but will probably corrupt the
partition table in the process, forcing you to "refind"
any other partitions on the disk after XP is through
installing. XP seems to be semi-aware of disk partitions.
It's aware enough to access multiple partitions, but not
aware enough to be well behaved. It's aware enough to
take over booting (without asking), but not aware enough
to see all installed OSs.

Some people also like to use disk caddies instead of
disk imaging. In that scenario you just plug in an
external disk to boot your OS of choice.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You can do that. I'm not sure whether...
[snip]

Some tolls will go to any length for a joke.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

If you don't want to download, install, and learn how
to work a 3rd-party's boot manager (and perhaps keep
it updated), you can use your BIOS to switch between
the two HDs - and thus between the two OSes.

The BIOS keeps a list of connected HDs (which some
BIOSes call the "Hard Drive Boot Order"), and the BIOS
will pass control to the MBR of the HD that is at the head
of that list. The HD's MBR will look in the HD's partition
table for a primary partition that is marked "active", and
then it will pass control to the Boot Sector of that partition.
The Boot Sector will then pass control to ntldr (the standard
boot manager for the NT/2K/XP family of OSes).

At the time of installing XP, the XP installer will see and
recognize other MS OSes, and it can be requested to kludge
boot procedures for them, but once XP is installed, it's ntldr
cannot boot ME. Thus the requirement for either a 3rd-party
boot manager or use of the BIOS to switch between OSes.

To use the BIOS to do the switching, just take control of the
BIOS at startup (check your user's guide). For Dell machines,
entry is gained by pressing Del. Then navigate through the
BIOS setup pages until you get to something that either lists
the connected HDs or "enables" a particular HD. Either put
the desired HD at the head of the list or "enable" it. Then
exit the BIOS and let the machine continue its startup. The
OS on the selected HD will be booted as if it were the only
OS in the system.

You can also accomplish the equivalent by use of a removable
HD tray called a "drive caddy" or "mobile rack". Just slide in
the tray containing the desired HD, and that HD becomes the
connected HD. Here is just one producer of mobile racks:
http://kingwin.com/mobileracks.asp
The kind with a single ventillation fan in the bottom of the tray
cools really well I've found. Prices are about $22-$25 for the
rack and tray, and around $15-$20 for extra trays. Check
Nextag.com and PriceGrabber.com using the model nos. for
latest "street" prices.

*TimDaniels*