More Dual Boot Questions Using XP

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I have been trying the methods suggested here to setup a dual boot pc with
windows XP---but I am running into problems that have not been discussed here.

I took the advice of using CasperXP to copy the contents of my current C:
drive windows XP MCE 2005 installation onto another physical drive, allowing
Casper XP to create a partition from the unallocated space on the second
physical drive.

The copy/transfer process seemed to go well---at which point I rebooted the
pc and entered the system BIOS. I changed the boot order of the drives to
have the second drive with the copy of the windows iXP MCE 2005 nstallation
just created boot first. I disable the drive with the original wndows
installtion from booting within BIOS as I have seen the comment that upon the
first boot of the copied windows installation, you do not want the original
installation to be active or seen by the copied system.

When I reboot out of BIOS, I get an error that there is a problem with
hal.dll and that the file needs to be replaced. I inserted the Windows XP CD
into the optical drive and rebooted to get to the MS recovery console---which
I can do. But recovery console does not ask me to pick a windows installation
to repair, it simply goes directly to msdos prompt C:\

If I try bootcfg /rebuild, I receive an error message that there is
something wrong with the partition and to try chkdsk to repair the problem.

When I try chkdsk, the response I get back is that there appears to be one
or more unrecoverable errors on the drive.

I also tried the the whole process over from the beginning but when I got to
the BIOS part, instead of disabling the drive with the original windows
installation on it from booting at all, I pulled the power plug on the drive
with the original windows installation so that the drive with the copied
windows installation would not even see the drive with the original
installation. But I received the same bootcfg and chkdsk errors as noted
above.

Did I miss something in the various discussions here on setting up a dual
boot system via cloning an existing windows XP installation onto another
physical drive..?

Thanks..
 
Yeah, you typically cannot clone the installation to another hard disk in the same system. You're better off doing a new install, using the Custom option, from within Windows XP and pointing it to the desired hard disk/partition. Other than that, boot managers, such as BootIt Next Generation, www.bootitng.com or PQ Boot (part of Partition Magic) allow you to hide partitions from each other, reorder them, etc. to your heart's content.
 
Rich said:
I have been trying the methods suggested here to setup a dual boot pc with
windows XP---but I am running into problems that have not been discussed
here.

I took the advice of using CasperXP to copy the contents of my current C:
drive windows XP MCE 2005 installation onto another physical drive,
allowing Casper XP to create a partition from the unallocated space on
the second physical drive.

The copy/transfer process seemed to go well---at which point I rebooted
the pc and entered the system BIOS. I changed the boot order of the
drives to have the second drive with the copy of the windows iXP
MCE 2005 nstallation just created boot first. I disable the drive wit
the original wndows installtion from booting within BIOS as I have seen
the comment that upon the first boot of the copied windows installation,
you do not want the original installation to be active or seen by the
copied system.

When I reboot out of BIOS, I get an error.....[....]

I also tried the the whole process over from the beginning but when
I got to the BIOS part, instead of disabling the drive with the original
windows installation on it from booting at all, I pulled the power plug
on the drive with the original windows installation so that the drive
with the copied windows installation would not even see the drive
with the original installation. But I received the same bootcfg and
chkdsk errors as noted above.

Did I miss something in the various discussions here on setting up
a dual boot system via cloning an existing windows XP installation
onto another physical drive..?
Click to expand...


First, ignore any advice which begins with "you typically cannot clone
the installation to another hard disk in the same system." That is totally
untrue, and it's absurd to say given the hundreds of thousands of people
who do it routinely all over the world - I being one of them.

The procedure after the cloning operation is to HIDE the original OS
during the 1st startup of the clone OS. Unless you want to futz with 3rd-
party utilities and pray that they work to hide and then unhide a partition,
the way to do that is to simply disconnect the data cable from the HD
containing the original OS. Disconnecting the *power* cable, I've found,
will not work reliably if the 2 HDs are on the same cable. The problem
that I've encountered is that the BIOS gets confused and simply won't
boot. If the 2 HDs are on separate cables (i.e. separate controller
channels), cutting the power to one HD will essentially remove it from
the system.

In your procedure, you merely changed the HD boot order, but you
did not physically disconnect the signal cable from the original HD to
hide it. Try doing the cloning again, and then phyically disconnect the
signal cable from the original HD before booting up the one containing
the clone OS. And in doing that, you needn't touch the BIOS - it will
automatically look for another HD's MBR when it can't find the
original HD. After you've started the clone OS and then shut it down,
if you want the original HD to control booting, just replace it and add
the 2nd entry to its boot.ini file with "rdisk(0)" replaced with "rdisk(1)".
That will allow you to dual-boot using the original HD.

If you want the 2nd HD to control booting, either switch the places
of the 2 HDs, or adjust the HD boot order in the BIOS, and add a 2nd
entry in the boot.ini file of the clone HD.

If you continue to have trouble, try formatting the 2nd HD using the
Disk Management utility running in the 1st HD. Then run chkdsk to
check out its surface as the problem might be physical.

*TimDaniels*
 
Hi, I have setup a dual boot system using the free version of XXCopy, which
you can find at http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm , it was recommend by
someone on this forum and I'm really pleased with it. It gives you a
bootable clone on any partition you want.



There is an option to boot the clone using a floppy but I edited my boot.ini
and now get the choice at bootup.



Every so often I reformat the partition and redo the clone to keep it up to
date.
 
Doug Knox MS-MVP said:
Yeah, you typically cannot clone the installation to another
hard disk in the same system.
Click to expand...


Trying to be provocative? Perhaps you'd like to review
that statement. How else is a hard disk to be cloned if
not to another hard disk in the same system? Perhaps
you mean "to another partition on the same hard drive"?
I can tell you that that works, too, and you can dual-boot
them as long as you have a utility that can "hide" the
"parent" OS's partition when the clone is started up for
the 1st time.

*TimDaniels*
 
Colinlam said:
Hi, I have setup a dual boot system using the free version of XXCopy, which
you can find at http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm , it was recommend by
someone on this forum and I'm really pleased with it. It gives you a
bootable clone on any partition you want.
Click to expand...


How long did it take to do the cloning (and how many GBs did
you transfer)? I tried xxClone (an easier-to-use derivative of
xxCopy by the same author as xxCopy), and it took about 3
hours to copy 20GBs. The author told me that he had tuned the
utility for speed of any subsequent incremental updates and not
for the initial copy. Since all me cloning is for the initial copy,
I gave up on xxClone.

*TimDaniels*
 
No, if I have C and D drives in the same system, it can be cloned between the two, But if you leave both drives in the system, not remove and swap, I've yet to see the "cloned" copy boot, without some major tinkering.
 
WOW Mr Daniels---that was exactly the problem..!

I recloned my C drive again using Casper XP as you suggested, powered down
the pc and then disconnected both the SATA cable and the power cable from the
drive containing the original windows installation. I was then able to boot
the system (without any changes the BIOS) into the cloned operating system.

I made the changes the boot.ini file as you noted and now I get the menu
when I start the pc asking which operating system I want to boot up...

Great..! Thanks for the help...!!

Rich
 
I'm glad to have been of help, and thanks for the feedback.

*TimDaniels*

Rich said:
WOW Mr Daniels---that was exactly the problem..!

I recloned my C drive again using Casper XP as you suggested, powered
down the pc and then disconnected both the SATA cable and the power
cable from the drive containing the original windows installation. I was then
able to boot the system (without any changes the BIOS) into the cloned
operating system.

I made the changes the boot.ini file as you noted and now I get the menu
when I start the pc asking which operating system I want to boot up...

Great..! Thanks for the help...!!

Rich

Timothy Daniels said:
[...] Disconnecting the *power* cable, I've found,
will not work reliably if the 2 HDs are on the same cable. The problem
that I've encountered is that the BIOS gets confused and simply won't
boot. If the 2 HDs are on separate cables (i.e. separate controller
channels), cutting the power to one HD will essentially remove it from
the system.

In your procedure, you merely changed the HD boot order, but you
did not physically disconnect the signal cable from the original HD to
hide it. Try doing the cloning again, and then phyically disconnect the
signal cable from the original HD before booting up the one containing
the clone OS. And in doing that, you needn't touch the BIOS - it will
automatically look for another HD's MBR when it can't find the
original HD. After you've started the clone OS and then shut it down,
if you want the original HD to control booting, just replace it and add
the 2nd entry to its boot.ini file with "rdisk(0)" replaced with "rdisk(1)".
That will allow you to dual-boot using the original HD.

If you want the 2nd HD to control booting, either switch the places
of the 2 HDs, or adjust the HD boot order in the BIOS, and add a 2nd
entry in the boot.ini file of the clone HD.

If you continue to have trouble, try formatting the 2nd HD using the
Disk Management utility running in the 1st HD. Then run chkdsk to
check out its surface as the problem might be physical.

*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Doug Knox MS-MVP said:
No, if I have C and D drives in the same system, it can be cloned
between the two, But if you leave both drives in the system,
not remove and swap, I've yet to see the "cloned" copy boot,
without some major tinkering.
Click to expand...


Assuming that by "C and D drives", you mean "HD0 and HD1"
and that by "it can be cloned between the two" you mean
"an OS can be cloned from a partition on HD0 to a partition
on HD1", you have the right picture of the situation. AND...
here's how to make the clone OS boot up without any "major
tinkering": Just remove HD0.

Removing HD0 lets HD1 move to the head of the BIOS's
hard drive boot order, and by having that position in the HD
boot order, the MBR of HD1 (the HD containing the clone OS)
will get control from the BIOS, that MBR will pass control to the
boot sector of the "active" Primary partition on HD1. Since
Casper XP marks the clone partition as "active", this will be
the one containing the boot files - IF the original partition also
contained boot files. Among those boot files, the boot.ini file
will contain the same contents as the original partition's boot.ini
file, and the parameter "rdisk(0)", which indicates the HD at the
head of the BIOS's HD boot order, will represent HD1 instead
of HD0 due to the BIOS's hard drive boot order being changed,
and the clone OS on HD1 will get loaded.

In Ghost 9.0/10.0 and perhaps other cloning utilities, you have
options on whether to copy the original HD's MBR and whether
to mark the new partition "active". If you don't select those
options, the clone on HD1 won't get booted. In Casper XP,
though, those operations are done automatically.

Here is the *default* HD boot order for IDE hard drives:
Master, ch. 0,
Slave, ch. 0,
Master, ch. 1,
Slave, ch. 1.

If the Master IDE device on ch. 0 is not a hard drive,
the BIOS will just continue looking for the next IDE device
in the HD boot order until it finds one with a valid MBR.
The "rdisk()" parameters in the boot.ini file entries just
refer to relative positions (starting with "0") of HDs in that
list of HDs. When you change the HD boot order in the
BIOS, you also change the meaning of the rdisk()
parameters, so you have to know the meaning of "rdisk()"
if you do much futzing in the BIOS.

*TimDaniels*
 
Hi, XXCopy will "Clean" a partition before the copy but I've found it quicker
to do a Quick format and then copy. It takes approximately 25 minutes to copy
12gig. The result is really worth the time invested, you can boot straight
away with no troube about having to hide or diconnect the other drive.
 
Yes, if you edit the boot.ini you can boot to either by choosing which one
from the menu at boot. If you use a floppy option the machine will boot to
the original as usual and to boot the clone you have to insert the floppy
before booting.
 
colinlam said:
...you can boot straight away with no troube about having to hide
or diconnect the other drive.
Click to expand...


I highly recommend AGAINST starting up the clone "straight away"
without first disconnecting the original HD. The problems with
starting up any WinNT/2K/XP clone for the 1st time with the
"parent" OS visible to it can be very subtle and hard to detect
until you eventually remove the "parent" OS from the system. In
my own experience, I found random files in the My Documents
folder of the clone were not actual physical files in the clone's
partition, but actually just shortcuts to the identically named files
in the original partition. I had been editing files that I thought were
in the clone when actually the only copy of that file was in the
"parent's" partition. In a My Documents folder containing hundreds
of documents, I found about 5 that were just shortcuts. There
were similar problems in the folder for Outlook Express as well.
Such crossed filings are very hard to find (unless they occur in
the registry), and the realization comes suddenly when you go to
access a file on the clone that isn't there because you've
reformatted the original partition and the real file is now GONE.
The lucky people are those who can't get the clone to boot up in
the first place. The unlucky ones are those who think that since
the clone booted up OK, everything must be fine. Bottom line -
hide or remove the "parent" OS's partition when starting up the
clone for the 1st time. After that 1st time, it's OK for the clone
to start up with its "parent" OS visible to it.

*TimDaniels*
 
Hi, thanks for the reply, some very interesting points. This is why this
forum is so good and you guys with alot of experience really help us trying
to find our way.

You mention files in "My Documents" being shortcuts, are these hidden system
files or just documents? I have "My Documents on a third partition but of
course "My settings" are still on "C".

Any further comments would be appreciated, thanks.
 
colinlam said:
You mention files in "My Documents" being shortcuts, are these
hidden system files or just documents? I have "My Documents
on a third partition but of course "My settings" are still on "C".
Click to expand...


In my system, My Documents is just a visible folder that
contains mostly text files. It isn't a system folder, but it
is on the same partition as the OS, so it gets copied over
in the cloning process. If your My Documents folder is
on a separate partition, the shortcut pointing to it may
become invalid when new partitions are introduced in
the system unless the name of that partition does not
change.

The seemingly random and sometimes sparse errors
which are generated when the clone sees its "parent"
when starting up for the first time are a mystery to virtually
everyone who has observed them, but the word has been
floating around for several years. They don't seem to
happen when the isolation at initial startup is performed,
so the isolation step is strongly recommended - especially
since not doing it could cause the loss of important files.

It has been a nagging suspicion of mine that this feature
was designed into the WinNT/2K/XP family of Windows
to discourage cloning of operating system installations.
It will be interesting to see if Vista has any new "difficulties"
for cloning.

*TimDaniels*
 
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