Multi Boot

[zyklonterror]

I have put in a HD from a previous PC with XP already on it into this PC with
XP on it as well. Am I able to set up a multi boot with with operating
systems already on the drives? I really want to keep the the files (recording
software and projects) from the drive and be able to boot to it if needed.

 

[AlmostBob]

Don’t really think that’s a good idea,
at least some of the drivers installed the 'old' pc are likely different to
the new one, and video etc may not work right if you just boot from the old
drive as is

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[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have put in a HD from a previous PC with XP already on it into this PC
with
XP on it as well. Am I able to set up a multi boot with with operating
systems already on the drives? I really want to keep the the files
(recording
software and projects) from the drive and be able to boot to it if needed.

Yes, you are, using a third-party boot loader such as XOSL.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:

Yes, you are, using a third-party boot loader such as XOSL.

And the OP should be able to do the same thing with what now
exists in either XP. As I understand the OP's system, there is a
working XP on one HD, and he has put in another HD that has a
working XP on it also. All he has to do in such case is to add one
line to the boot.ini file that exists at C:\boot.ini on the 1st HD:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP on my 2nd HD" /noexecute=optin
/fastdetect

This presumes that the 2nd HD is not at the head of the Hard Drive
Boot Order, which means in the default IDE case, that it is not the
Master on IDE ch. 0 (in some BIOSes, the default order can be
arbitrarily re-set by the user). In the case of SATA drives, this
means that the 2nd HD is not on SATA ch. 0. The "2nd HD" is
expressed by "rdisk(1)". The line also presumes that the XP on the
2nd HD resides in partition 1, expressed by "partition(1)". If it is
not in partition 1, set the no. between the parentheses to be the no.
of the partition that contains the 2nd XP.

Also set the timeout value to be some reasonable no. of seconds
to give the user time to make up his mind which OS to boot -
something like "10", meaning "10 seconds". Then, at boot time,
a menu will appear on the screen presenting the 2 choices of XP,
and the user can select which one to load. If no selection is made
within 10 seconds, the default XP will be loaded - presumably
the XP on the 1st HD.

*TimDaniels*

 

[C.Joseph S. Drayton]

I have put in a HD from a previous PC with XP already on it into this
PC with XP on it as well. Am I able to set up a multi boot with with
operating systems already on the drives? I really want to keep the
the files (recording software and projects) from the drive and be
able to boot to it if needed.

In order to answer that question, I would first have to ask what drive
letter was assigned to the 'second' hard disk when you were using it in
a different machine. If your current drive is 'C', the second drive
would be assigned a different drive letter. The problem is that if the
second drive was 'C' on its original machine, then all of the
applications on it will be expecting to run from 'C' which of course
the 'second' drive would no longer be.

If you disabled the current drive so that the second drive could become
'C' then you wold be fine. If not, some of your applications on the
second drive that require information from the registry pointing to
needed support files would not function properly.

--

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Please excuse the TEMPORARY web site

Web site: http://csdcs.itgo.com/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

That was my thought as well. Without changing the boot drive in the BIOS I
should think most of the installed software would have issues, not to
mention the OS.

 

[John John (MVP)]

It shouldn't matter, the drive letter assignment will respect the Mount
Manager database of the booted Windows installation, the Boot Volume
will retain it's drive letter and the System drive would be assigned a
different drive letter. In effect both installations would retain their
drive letters. The caveat to that is that the installation from a
different pc would probably not boot properly without a repair install
and a repair install re-enumerates drive letters, so when doing the
reinstall the other drive should be temporarily disconnected so as to
not force a drive letter change on the installation, once the repair
installation is done the other drive can be connected again and both
Windows installation will retain their boot volume letters when booted,
regardless of the system drive used to boot the computer.

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

It may help the OP to know that John John is using Microsoft's
terminology regarding the boot procedure, wherein:

"System Volume" refers to the partition containing the boot files,
e.g. ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com, and
"Boot Volume" refers to the partition which contains the
operating system.

(Yes, they seem intuitively reversed, but it's due to historical reasons.)
In most systems, the System Volume and the Boot Volume are the
same partition, and most people don't differentiate between them,
as evidenced by many of the postings in this and other NGs. But
when it comes to multi-booting, it's important to know that they
needn't be the same, and that while the System Volume must be a
Primary partition that is marked "active" on the hard drive designated
the boot drive by virtue of it being at the head of the Hard Drive Boot
Order in the BIOS (or by explicit selection in the BIOS), the Boot
Volume (the one with the operating system) may be any partition on
any hard drive in the system - even a logical partition.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

In order to answer that question, I would first have to ask what drive
letter was assigned to the 'second' hard disk when you were using it in
a different machine. If your current drive is 'C', the second drive
would be assigned a different drive letter. The problem is that if the
second drive was 'C' on its original machine, then all of the
applications on it will be expecting to run from 'C' which of course
the 'second' drive would no longer be.

If you disabled the current drive so that the second drive could become
'C' then you wold be fine. If not, some of your applications on the
second drive that require information from the registry pointing to
needed support files would not function properly.

Disregarding the complication of the 2nd HD coming from a
different machine, the drive letter that the XP in the 2nd HD has is
irrelevant (as long as neither XP contains shortcuts that reference
drive letters other than its own.) Such is the case of HDs containing
clones of the local XP, wherein each XP, *when it is running*, will
refer to its own partition as "C:", and it will refer to other partitions
(including the partitions containing clones) by other tempoarily
assigned letter names. I've pointed this out many times in this very
NG, but it never seems to sink in, perhaps because no one ever
takes the time to verify it.

*TimDaniels*

 

[C.Joseph S. Drayton]

Disregarding the complication of the 2nd HD coming from a
different machine, the drive letter that the XP in the 2nd HD has is
irrelevant (as long as neither XP contains shortcuts that reference
drive letters other than its own.) Such is the case of HDs containing
clones of the local XP, wherein each XP, *when it is running*, will
refer to its own partition as "C:", and it will refer to other
partitions (including the partitions containing clones) by other
tempoarily assigned letter names. I've pointed this out many times
in this very NG, but it never seems to sink in, perhaps because no
one ever takes the time to verify it.

*TimDaniels*

Hi Tim,

The last time I tried what the OP is talking about was about 5 years
ago. The 'current' machine had WindowsXP on it. The second drive had
Windows2000pe. I edited boot.ini, and the second drive came up as a
drive letter other than 'C' which is what it had been when I pulled it
out of the old computer.

The possibility that I edited boot.ini does exist, at the time I was in
a rush and didn't play with it.

I asked my question and based my response on personal experience. When
I have time I will look into the matter further and see if I can get
the second drive to come up as 'C' as you say it should. My laptop has
2 drive bays so I can pull the drive from my backup machine and see
what happens. As I recall I edited boot.ini with a text editor. Is
there some application you would recommend for editing the file so that
I can get the parameters correct (I will admit I like wizards when I
want to be sure that the entry is correct rather than trust my 2 extra
thumbs).

--

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Please excuse the TEMPORARY web site

Web site: http://csdcs.itgo.com/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Hi Tim,

The last time I tried what the OP is talking about was about
5 years ago. The 'current' machine had WindowsXP on it.
The second drive had Windows2000pe. I edited boot.ini,
and the second drive came up as a drive letter other than 'C'
which is what it had been when I pulled it out of the old
computer.

It's unclear whether the 2nd drive had had "C:" as its drive
letter prior to its introduction to the system which already
contained XP, or whether it had a drive letter other than that.
I would have expected it to run using its old drive letter, as
that would have been in its registry and it would have seen
the XP OS as just files of data.

The possibility that I edited boot.ini does exist, at the time
I was in a rush and didn't play with it.

Editing boot.ini would not have affected the drive letter that
the 2nd OS used in reference to its own partition when it was
running. Boot.ini just affects whether or not the 2nd OS
could be designated by the user for loading.

[...] When I have time I will look into the matter further and see
if I can get the second drive to come up as 'C' as you say it should.

The 2nd OS should refer to its own partition as "C:" if that is
what it previously used in reference to its own partition. If it had
been installed while another previously installed OS was visible
which had taken that letter name for its partition, the 2nd OS would
know its own partition by some other letter name, perhaps "D:".
But if you run the test using as the 2nd HD one which had been
previously installed in another machine, some renaming may go on
to which John John alluded and about which I know nothing.

My laptop has 2 drive bays so I can pull the drive from my backup
machine and see what happens.

Well, that will introduce the complication of another machine.
Let us know what happens.

As I recall I edited boot.ini with a text editor. Is there some
application you would recommend for editing the file so that
I can get the parameters correct ....

I've never used the boot.ini wizard, preferring to know and
control what's going on directly by editing manually with Notepad,
but I hear that the following will "wizardize" the process:

Click "Start", "Run" and enter "msconfig", "OK",
Click the "BOOT.INI" tab,
Click the "Check All Boot Paths" button,
(boot.ini will be edited to reflect all OSes found),
Click "Apply", "OK",
Click the "Restart" button and expect a menu screen
after the POST stage of bootup.
At some point in the "wizard", the timeout value might be
requested, but not having used the wizard, I don't know.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Jason]

1. XP (any version of windows) will not run properly if the correct drivers
are not installed. This excludes the initial install where you are
installing Windows from scratch and it will quite happily run with no
drivers for the motherboard. It will also not detect hard drives (or
Optical/Zip) that are conencted to a seperate card.

2. If the hard drive was installed as C in the old computer then the OS will
look for files on the C drive even though it may be installed as D or any
other letter.

 

[Jason]

What about registry entries for other programs etc.

 

[Jason]

Just realised XP picks up the drive letters from it's own registry - If
drives are added or changed while one OS is running then they may not come
up in the same order in the other OS unless you boot into each one OS and
then the other immediately afterwards without changing the drives. Also this
depends on the registry (e.g If one OS is C D E then the next is F, if the
other is C D F (or any letter after F then the next letter would be E)

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Just realised XP picks up the drive letters from it's own registry -

This is true.

If drives are added or changed while one OS is running then they
may not come up in the same order in the other OS

This is true.

unless you boot into each one OS and then the other immediately
afterwards without changing the drives.

WTF?

As long as there are no references (i.e. pathnames) to other
partitions (i.e. "drives") in the OS that is running, there will be no
naming problem. The *running OS* assigns names to all the
partitions it finds, regardless of what names another OS may have
known those partitions by. Those names will persist as long as
the running OS continues to run. Only pathnames which direct it
to another partition may cause drive name problems.

The greater problem will be running the XP which had been
installed on another system. It might have to be re-activated.


*TimDaniels*