Dual boot via bios

[Guest]

I have xp installed on a SATA (drive C, Vista on a IDE. Currently i unplug
one drive while using the other.
Has anyone any experience with leaving both hooked up, each as a master on
its own Bus and changing the Boot drive via the Bios? How do they react..?

 

[John Barnes]

Works fine if it works now, the one thing you will have a problem with is
that xp wipes out the Vista restore points, so if you care, see the
vista.general newsgroup for ways around it.

 

[TDM]

I haven't tried it. But intuitively it seems it shouldn't matter. That
master/slave concept only applies to two IDE drives that are on a single
cable. SATA drives don't play Master/Slave games.

 

[Steve Urbach]

I have xp installed on a SATA (drive C, Vista on a IDE. Currently i unplug
one drive while using the other.
Has anyone any experience with leaving both hooked up, each as a master on
its own Bus and changing the Boot drive via the Bios? How do they react..?

I boot Vista on a IDE0 and XP pro on SCSI(Raid)0.
I just change the boot order in BIOS.

(un)Interestingly, If I have a bootable vista CD in the drive, Even if
I don't select "boot from CD" at the BIOS boot time prompt, Vista
always boots.
Shuttle AN35NUltra motherboard, Release S00 of the bios.
Steve

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Download VistaBoot Pro. It will allow you to easily change the default
boot.

 

[Guest]

See this is where I have a major disconnect with you all. Ok you dont need to
unplug this or that or go get this or that programm. Just do it like its
supposed to be done. Ok I have (c) drive with XP Pro and I had a second
drive (E)that I had messed up the MFT on, but was able to access through (C)
drive. So I got tired of that and decided to get Vista and have a dual boot.
I went and Downloaded it and Burned it to DVD. No Problem right guys. Next I
put the DVD in and started the Install Process. (NOTE: I renamed my C drive
To C: XP PRO just to avoid any confusion) so when the install process started
again I unplugged nothing. Vista saw I had two drives and said which do you
want to load vista on. I chose E which was my second drive. It loaded just
fine and when done the computer restarted. UP on restart it asked me what
version of windows do you want to load 1:Earlier Version or 2 Windows Vista.
I chose Vista and it works great just like a dual boot should. If I want to
go back to XP PRO I just restart and chose Earlier Windows Version. I dont
have to unplug anything never had to to with Bios or change the Boot up
string. I think we tend to over complicate this and un plug this or that and
that is why you are having this issue. So for all you dual booters. Just
leave it all plugged in load Vista pick the drive you want to load Vista on
for Dual boot(which cant be the C drive or main computer Drive, it has to be
a secondary etc.. drive) and load it. Piece of cake. Let your computer and
bios do the rest and you'll be fine.

 

[John Barnes]

1. Doesn't answer the question asked
2. Contains misinformation
3. Also doesn't warn of or inform about problems that one will run into if
one wants to uninstall Vista

 

[Guest]

Does answer the question
I dont know where you get the misinformation. I did it and it works
Unintall Vista, MMM hard one. remove the Drive or format it

 

[Guest]

mmhmm,
i would agree with John Barnes...

The original question posed here was an innovative solution and will prevent
vista from screwing with xp and vice versa but can you enable both drives at
once now????
.... danno, is the boot drive always labelled as c: regardless of in vista or
XP??? Not sure here how the bios assigns drive letters in the case of a
primary ide and a primary sata enabled at once.. this could be your only
hurdle unless it always assigns c:\ to the highest drive in the boot priority
in which case there is no reason why it would be a problem.

mstout2001:
1. Just because this worked for you, at the moment being beta it does not
seem to work for everyone... look around on here and you will see people with
hosed XP installations that tried what you just described...
2. Installing vista (regardless of where you put it) replaces the XP
bootsector with it's own bootloader. In the future if you want to remove
Vista it is not as simple as you describe.... it requires replacing the
bootsector with a working XP one which can be done from the recovery console
(not recommended for novice users without a little light reading first) or by
doing an in-place installation of xp which can be messy to say the least.
Failing to do this results in a bootloader that defaults (unless you have
changed this) to an OS which does not exist should you wipe vista in the
future....

 

[Ben Salisbury]

Danno-

I'm currently running it in a similar scenario, Except 2 IDE not 1 SATA 1
IDE
On my last install. I put XP on a fresh format, Removed the HD
Put in another freshly formatted Drive and installed Vista.

I then re-installed the XP drive (jumpered to master)
and set the vista drive to slave. I'm using the BootSprite on my MOBO to
choose which one I want.

So far I'm not having any issues with drive letters, Vista did "alter" the
recycle bin on the XP drive but it has caused no noticeable ill effect.

-Ben

 

[Guest]

I am getting ready to do similar, I currently have XP Pro on Master (IDE) C:
,also I have a SATA Raid as a second drive.
I am about to install a clean drive for vista. I want to do a clean install
so I plan to disconect both the current drives, install the new drive as a
Master,(IDE) install vista.
After the installation I want to change the new Vista drive to slave (IDE)
and the XP Pro drive to master, plug in the SATA (I use this drive for movies
and backup) then hopefully boot into XP as the drive should not have been
altered at all, install VistaBoot Pro on the XP Master drive to allow the
option of os during boot up, does anyone see a problem with this process?
Thanks

 

[John Barnes]

Just make sure your BIOS has the XP drive as your system drive when you
reinstall it in your machine.