Multiple Boot with two physical drives

[Mike E]

I have two SATA hard drives, one with Win XP Home and one with Win XP Pro.
When I boot up they both show on the selection screen, but when I click on
the second one with XP Pro, it doesn't boot. The first one does boot. I can
open the second one by switching the order of boot sequence in the bios and
then restarting, so I know it works. When I look at the boot.ini files for
each program, they both say Partition = 1. I tried to change that to 2 for
the second drive, but I still could not open it on boot up.

 

[JS]

"Invalid Boot.ini" or "Windows could not start" error messages when you
start your computer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330184

How to rebuild the Windows boot.ini
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000648.htm

How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP
See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022/en-us
and: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314081/en-us

Boot.ini switches explained:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/bootini.mspx

 

[Brian A.]

I have two SATA hard drives, one with Win XP Home and one with Win XP Pro.

When I boot up they both show on the selection screen, but when I click on
the second one with XP Pro, it doesn't boot. The first one does boot. I
can open the second one by switching the order of boot sequence in the
bios and then restarting, so I know it works. When I look at the
boot.ini files for each program, they both say Partition = 1. I tried to
change that to 2 for the second drive, but I still could not open it on
boot up. --
Mike E

Since XP Home and XP Pro are installed on separate drives and each OS is
on the only or first partition of the drive, you need to change rdisk(0) to
rdisk(1) in one of the entries in boot.ini.

It should look like:
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect

For some reading on the boot.ini:
http://thpc.info/how/editbootini.html


--
Brian A. Sesko
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Brian A." said:

[......]
It should look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

For more clarity of the on-screen boot menu, it would probably
help to call one "XP Home" and the other "XP Professional", as in:

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Home"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect


*TimDaniels*