Dual-boot - XP and W7

[Kid A]

I've recently installed a dual boot setup on my PC, with XP and W7 running on
seperate SATA HDDs. I have some boot-up issues that I can't seem to resolve.
XP has boot priority in the BIOS, and so without my intervention the PC
should boot straight to XP.

XP is on the SATA 3 position on my mobo, and W7 is SATA 1.

Symptoms as follows:

Firstly, I never get the BIOS screen showing the 2 opertaing systems with
the countdown timer, giving me the option to boot into one or the other. The
only way I get to choose is if I hit F8 to manualy go into the boot loader
and choose which OS to boot.

Sometimes the BIOS cannot 'see' the XP drive or OS. This is evident in 2
ways -1) if I allow the PC to boot without choosing an OS, Ithe XP loading
screen sometimes hangs for ages, and then reboots, and goes through it again.
2) if I go into the boot loader to choose the OS, sometimes it only shows the
W7 drive.

These problems disappear if I disconnect the W7 HDD. XP will boot normally
and without problem. Plugging the W7 drive back in allows things to work
properly for a couple of boots - I can see and choose both OSs - but then the
XP drive will disappear again.

I really want to be able to switch between the OSs without keep opening the
case to disconnect the W7 drive.

Any ideas?
Cheers

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf (MVP)]

I've recently installed a dual boot setup on my PC, with XP and W7 running on

seperate SATA HDDs. I have some boot-up issues that I can't seem to resolve.
XP has boot priority in the BIOS, and so without my intervention the PC
should boot straight to XP.

XP is on the SATA 3 position on my mobo, and W7 is SATA 1.

Symptoms as follows:

Firstly, I never get the BIOS screen showing the 2 opertaing systems with
the countdown timer, giving me the option to boot into one or the other. The
only way I get to choose is if I hit F8 to manualy go into the boot loader
and choose which OS to boot.

Sometimes the BIOS cannot 'see' the XP drive or OS. This is evident in 2
ways -1) if I allow the PC to boot without choosing an OS, Ithe XP loading
screen sometimes hangs for ages, and then reboots, and goes through it again.
2) if I go into the boot loader to choose the OS, sometimes it only shows the
W7 drive.

These problems disappear if I disconnect the W7 HDD. XP will boot normally
and without problem. Plugging the W7 drive back in allows things to work
properly for a couple of boots - I can see and choose both OSs - but then the
XP drive will disappear again.

I really want to be able to switch between the OSs without keep opening the
case to disconnect the W7 drive.

Any ideas?
Cheers

You should google dual-boot and boot.ini editing.

 

[sgopus]

Sounds like you need a boot manager and with RC 7 the regular Boot manager
won't work, try BCDboot.exe or do a search for boot manager with Win 7,
actually boot priority ie OS is set by a boot manager, not the Bios.
The bios sets which drive is the primary boot device, and has nothing to do
with the Operating system, as far as which OS boots first.

Part of your problem is using two different drives one for XP and the other
for RC 7, you should use only one, or when installing RC 7 disconnect the
other first, you will still need a boot manager, or you can repartition just
the one drive and with xp already installed create a separate partition for
RC 7 and within Xp install RC 7 onto the new partition and it will create the
boot menu for you, although be aware once this is done, the regular boot menu
editor will no longer work, you will need a boot editor that is compatable
with RC 7.