dual booting on two hard drives

[Guest]

Can anyone tell me how the boot.ini should read to boot xp from disk 0 and me
from disk 1? I know I need to add a line to the boot ini for the second hard
drive, but I don't know the proper syntax. I can find all sorts of info on
dual booting from two partitions on the same drive, but very little on dual
booting from two drives. I have the old drive the system was running me on,
and a new drive with xp installed. It will boot from either drive, if it is
jumpered as master, but I can't get it to dual boot with the xp drive as
master and the me drive as slave

 

[Rich Barry]

Have both drives connected and in the Bios select cdrom drive as first
boot device. Then using the WinXP CD boot into the
Recovery Console. When you get to the prompt> type: bootcfg /rebuild
That should add the WinMe OS to the boot.ini file. For more info on the
Recovery Console check here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/

 

[Admiral Q]

: Can anyone tell me how the boot.ini should read to boot xp from
disk 0 and me
: from disk 1? I know I need to add a line to the boot ini for the
second hard
: drive, but I don't know the proper syntax. I can find all sorts of
info on
: dual booting from two partitions on the same drive, but very
little on dual
: booting from two drives. I have the old drive the system was
running me on,
: and a new drive with xp installed. It will boot from either
drive, if it is
: jumpered as master, but I can't get it to dual boot with the xp
drive as
: master and the me drive as slave


If using the boot.ini, the master drive, with the boot.ini,
command.com, io.sys, msdos.sys, autoexec.bat and config.sys, must be
a FAT16 or FAT32 drive as WinME can't read NTFS drives. This is why
you should install WinME first, on the Master, FAT32, then you can
install WinXP on the slave, NTFS (if you don't want WinME to read
it) or FAT32 if you wish to share files between the two OS's.

--


Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your service!

Google is your friend!
http://www.google.com

 

[gs]

I what Rich told you does not work, then you have another option:
use the PC's bios to boot the drive you want. Some bios let you press the
key during initial boot sequence and then give a menu of drives to boot
form. Some older one, you would have to press the del key or whatever to
get into the BIOS and make the change for boot drive sequence. save and
start again.



Just remember when you are in me, you may not see Win Xp partition assuming
you installed with NTFS by default

 

[Guest]

have you tried startup > run > msconfig > boot.ini > check....btn ?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Can anyone tell me how the boot.ini should read to boot xp
from disk 0 and me from disk 1?

I assume that "me" is Windows 98ME.

I know I need to add a line to the boot ini for the second hard
drive, but I don't know the proper syntax. I can find all sorts of
info on dual booting from two partitions on the same drive,
but very little on dual booting from two drives.

Search Groups.Google.com for an article this January in
alt.sys.pc-clone.dell by me on "the meaning of "rdisk()" in
boot.ini". This will tell you all you need to know about
setting up the boot.ini file for dual-booting with WinXP/2K/NT.
Including the entry for booting the Win98ME in a dual-boot
is the trick.

I have the old drive the system was running me on,

I assume you mean "Windows 98ME".

and a new drive with xp installed.

Windows XP?

It will boot from either drive, if it is jumpered as master, but
I can't get it to dual boot with the xp drive as master and the
me drive as slave

Three "it"s in one sentence, and not all of them refering to
the same precedent. Caryminny, you make it hard to help
you.

I'll assume you meant this - "Either OS will be booted if its
HD is alone and jumpered as Master, but if both HDs are
connected with the WinXP HD as Master and the Win98ME
as Slave, no OS will be booted."

That's because the boot files on the Win98ME HD know
how to boot only Win98ME, and there's no 2nd entry in
the boot.ini file for WinXP that points to the Win98ME HD.
The easiest way to solve that is to use DataBaseBen's
way by running msconfig. Rich Barry's method using the
WinXP installer's Recovery Console to do it for you is
another. Either method should add a 2nd boot.ini entry
that looks something like "C:\Windows".

The method posed by "gs" involves treating each HD as
a stand-alone HD and using the BIOS to put one or the
other HD at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order. Which
HD is jumpered as Master on ch. 0 will be the HD which
gets control during the boot process in the BIOS's *default*
case. But most BIOSes allow you to change the boot
order (i.e. boot priority) of the HDs via keyboard, so you
can make a HD with *any* jumper setting on *either* IDE
channel be the boot HD. Such a method takes only a
few seconds to switch the HD boot order, and it removes
the need to select the OS every time you boot.

*TimDaniels*