Dual Boot

[Mike Y]

I recently picked up a new desktop with a Core 2 Duo processor. I have it
set
up with Vista Home Premium on it's primary 350+Gig drive.

But I have other stuff that HAS to run on XP or older. Business stuff.
Work
stuff. Stuff like hardware ICE setups, and BDM pods for uControllers.

It was hard enough making some of that stuff run under XP. In some cases,
I have 'custom' license files to make it work. And that's something I would
probably have a real problem getting again for Vista, if I could at all.

So, I bought another SATA hard drive, just over 250Gig. I figure put it in
the system and set it up to dual-boot from the BIOS, with XP on the second
drive.

Or... Would I be better with a dual-boot off the main drive with a
partition
manager type program?

Any ideas on which way to go with this?

Mike

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Mike.

This question comes up often and we hate to keep typing the same long
response over and over. See the post I just made in the
vista.hardware_devices newsgroup, Subject: Can't dual boot back to xp need
help, started by "xp-vista-xp".

The basic idea is simple enough, but there are so many possible variations
that it takes a lot of words to cover them all.

I've been dual-booting for nearly a decade and, as I said there, I prefer
the system Microsoft has built into every Windows version since at least
Win2K. It's basically like a "Y", with the System Partition at the base,
branching to multiple Boot Volumes. There's only one System Partition and
it must be the Active primary partition on the boot device, as designated in
the BIOS. But there can be any number of Boot Volumes, each on a primary
partition or logical drive on any physical drive in the system.

When we install the NEWEST operating system LAST, its Setup detects the
older installation and creates the dual-boot menu automatically. When we
install an older OS later, though, it messes up this scheme and we must then
run at least a part of the newer system's Setup again to let it re-establish
the dual-boot.

Mixing IDE/SCSI/SATA hard drives can create more complications, but it
sounds like you are using two compatible SATA drives, so we can skip those
caveats.

Others prefer to use multiple System Partitions, one on each hard drive, and
use the BIOS to switch boot devices on reboot.

Bottom line: it depends on how YOU want to set up and use YOUR computer.
;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Mick Murphy]

http://apcmag.com/node/5162/

A read about about dual-booting.

You can also use a Virtual Machine for your XP, and specific applications.

 

[Mike Y]

Thanks. I understand the basic process (I've written partition handlers),
but I
was looking more for guidance with regards to Vista and XP, since Vista came
'pre-installed'.

Years ago (back in DOS 5.0 days) I wrote a partition manager program after I
discovered that my boss was coming into the office on weekends with his kids
and letting them go into cubes and run games. I very quickly wrote a
swapper
that made my 100Meg HD into a 5Meg HD that had no room left so he wouldn't
install any games....

You'd think that the side effect would be I'd get a bigger hard disk ordered
for
me, but no.....

Anyway, I'm gonna go with the BIOS switch, just to keep the original factory
HD (with multiple partitions) 'stock'.

Mike

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Mike.

I very quickly wrote a
swapper
that made my 100Meg HD into a 5Meg HD that had no room left so he wouldn't
install any games....

Cute idea! ;<)

Well, back when 5 MB was a big drive and I could understand FAT and the MBR,
I could probably do stuff like that, too. My favorite trick was to copy the
first 10 tracks or so of my HD into the last 10 tracks, then mark those
Used. Then, after our all-too-frequent thunderstorms, I could copy those
tracks back to the front to replace the critical startup bits that had been
zapped by lightning.

I do use the BIOS swap for booting, in addition to the Microsoft boot menu.
I have 3 HDs (4 actually, but 2 are a RAID mirror), each formatted with a
single Active primary partition and the rest of the drive in an extended
partition divided into multiple logical drives. I've installed Vista 3
times, once with each HD as the boot device, so that the MBR and other
startup files, including the dual-boot menu, are on each of the 3 HDs. So
if the 120 GB HD fails, I can boot from the 200 GB and keep working. I have
at least one WinXP or Vista boot volume on each HD, just in case.

Well, I USED to do all that. Vista has been so dependable that I haven't
booted into WinXP in months and I'm not sure it would boot anymore. These
new HDs are also much more reliable than the ones I was running a couple of
years ago. (2006 was a bad year for hard drives in my computer.)

In the early part of the Vista beta, we were able to just edit WinXP's
Boot.ini to choose between Vista and WinXP. But then Vista began to use its
new BCD (Boot Configuration Data) system. You should find that in the
hidden \Boot folder on the System Partition of your new Vista computer.
That's the main difference between booting WinXP and booting Vista, and it
takes some getting used to.

Dual-boot menu versus BIOS switch is a matter of individual choice and a lot
of expert users agree with you, so I won't try to change your mind. Good
luck!

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Mike Y]

Hi, Mike.


Cute idea! ;<)

Well, back when 5 MB was a big drive and I could understand FAT and the MBR,
I could probably do stuff like that, too. My favorite trick was to copy the
first 10 tracks or so of my HD into the last 10 tracks, then mark those
Used. Then, after our all-too-frequent thunderstorms, I could copy those
tracks back to the front to replace the critical startup bits that had been
zapped by lightning.

I do use the BIOS swap for booting, in addition to the Microsoft boot menu.
I have 3 HDs (4 actually, but 2 are a RAID mirror), each formatted with a
single Active primary partition and the rest of the drive in an extended
partition divided into multiple logical drives. I've installed Vista 3
times, once with each HD as the boot device, so that the MBR and other
startup files, including the dual-boot menu, are on each of the 3 HDs. So
if the 120 GB HD fails, I can boot from the 200 GB and keep working. I have
at least one WinXP or Vista boot volume on each HD, just in case.

Well, I USED to do all that. Vista has been so dependable that I haven't
booted into WinXP in months and I'm not sure it would boot anymore. These
new HDs are also much more reliable than the ones I was running a couple of
years ago. (2006 was a bad year for hard drives in my computer.)

In the early part of the Vista beta, we were able to just edit WinXP's
Boot.ini to choose between Vista and WinXP. But then Vista began to use its
new BCD (Boot Configuration Data) system. You should find that in the
hidden \Boot folder on the System Partition of your new Vista computer.
That's the main difference between booting WinXP and booting Vista, and it
takes some getting used to.

Dual-boot menu versus BIOS switch is a matter of individual choice and a lot
of expert users agree with you, so I won't try to change your mind. Good
luck!

RC

Well, I'm totally new to Vista. In fact, the first I've even seen it was
when I got
my new machine with it pre-installed, so this is a learning experience for
me. At
this point I haven't even sniffed out the boot sectors on the HD to see
what's
there!

As to the drives... I used to work for SystemSoft, and I wrote all the
PCMCIA
ATA stuff. And most of the flash, and... so you get the idea. But that
was a
LONG time ago, and in a universe enough different from today to make it
totally alien. Swapping the boot in the BIOS to me seems 'natural'.
Swapping
in the partition would be almost as natural, except I don't know what else
is
hidden in there, and while I'm sure I could easily write my own little
handler,
I wouldn't relish the research I'd need to feel all warm and fuzzy with what
I would write.

Mike