Dual boot....Win2000 and WinXP

[Tookie]

I have a couple of questions about arranging a dual boot on my computer.


I had XP Home on a computer, and wanted to install a second boot for
Win2000. After installing WIn200 I find that it won't boot WinXP anymore.
(I guess they only want you adding upgraded OS's...and not downgraded?)

The option comes up for XP to boot...but when I select it..it goes to error.

1.)Is there a way to fix this, so that it boots XP as well as 2000?
(Without destroying the other?)

2.) Through this process, I somehow ended up with a boot menu of 4 items.
How can I get rid of the boots I don't need anymore? Is there a way of
renaming them? Is there a way to find out which of the menu items boots
where? (i.e...I appear to have Win2000 installed ona couple of different
drives....and would like to eliminate the ones I don't need.....but I can't
tell which menu item boots off of which drive...)

Thanks for your help

 

[The poster formerly known as 'The Poster Formerly]

I have a couple of questions about arranging a dual boot on my computer.


I had XP Home on a computer, and wanted to install a second boot for
Win2000. After installing WIn200 I find that it won't boot WinXP anymore.
(I guess they only want you adding upgraded OS's...and not downgraded?)

The option comes up for XP to boot...but when I select it..it goes to error.

1.)Is there a way to fix this, so that it boots XP as well as 2000?
(Without destroying the other?)

2.) Through this process, I somehow ended up with a boot menu of 4 items.
How can I get rid of the boots I don't need anymore? Is there a way of
renaming them? Is there a way to find out which of the menu items boots
where? (i.e...I appear to have Win2000 installed ona couple of different
drives....and would like to eliminate the ones I don't need.....but I can't
tell which menu item boots off of which drive...)

Thanks for your help

I suspect an XP repair install will fix this for you.

--
"Software is like sex, it's better when it's free."
- Linus Torvalds

DRM and unintended consequences:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=435&tag=nl.e101

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You have to install the older OS first then Xp on a
separate partition. I don't believe W2K will recognize
XP and destroy it.

WinXP and Win2K boot similarly, and they don't destroy
each other. They both use ntldr as the boot manager/loader,
NTdetect.com as the environment detector, and boot.ini as
the boot menu. To know what boot.ini should contain, you
have to know:

1) Which Primary partition is set "active". You do this by
running Disk Management (rt-clk MyComputer/Manage/
DiskManagement). You can conrol which partition is
"active" if there are 2 or more partitions. With just one
partition, the sole partition will be "active".

2) The boot.ini file in the "active" partition will direct ntldr
to boot from a particular partion on a particular hard
drive in the system.

3) In that boot.ini, the lines under "[operating systems]" are
paths to the operating systems. Boot.ini resides directly
under the root ("/") of the file system. If you cannot see
it, you may have to make it visible (rt-clk Start/Explore
All Users/Tools/FolderOptions/View tab/HiddenFiles
AndFolders/check "Show hidden files and folders"/Apply/
OK). Open boot.ini with NotePad.

In what is called an "ARC path", "rdisk()" designates
the HD where the OS will be found, starting with 0,
and it corresponds to the HD Boot Order as designated
in the BIOS. Since you only have one HD, this value
can only be "0", i.e. rdisk(0).

"partition()" designates the partition no. where the OS
will be found, starting with 1. Since you have only 2
partitions with an OS on each one, there should only
be 2 ARC paths, one with partition(1), the other with
partition(2).

The character string (delimited by quotes) that comes
after the "=" appears in the on-screen menu, and it can
be set to anything that you want that, such as "Win2K"
and "WinXP".

Remove any other ARC path entries under "[operating
systems]" that don't make any sense. Above the
"[operating sytems]" line, "timeout" and "default" are
self-explanatory.

4) You can designate either partition to control the
booting by setting the "active" flag in the partition.
Disk Management calls that partition the "system"
partition, and it calls the partition containing the OS
the "boot" partition (that is inuitively backwards, but
it is for Microsoft's historical reasons). Just be sure
that the boot.ini file in the "active" partition is correct.

*TimDaniels*