PQ-BootMagic8.1 and 750Gig drive??

[Guest]

Before I continue to fight with getting BootMagic to work.
I hope someone can tell me if it will or will not work ever.

BM worked on my 250,320 Gig drives but so far as soon
as I enable Boot magic on my Western Digital 750 Gig ...won't boot and
Partition Magic has error #110.

Then I've got to boot to Xp cd and press R then "fixmbr"
to get back to Xp pro.

Other programs to use?
I miss my other xp and dos boot options...
I LIKE keeping unused partitions hidden
Keeps my drive letters down to a manageable level.

Thoughts Very Welcome!
jmc

 

[Rod Speed]

Before I continue to fight with getting BootMagic to work.
I hope someone can tell me if it will or will not work ever.

BM worked on my 250,320 Gig drives but so far as soon
as I enable Boot magic on my Western Digital 750 Gig ...
won't boot and Partition Magic has error #110.

Then I've got to boot to Xp cd and press R then "fixmbr"
to get back to Xp pro.

Other programs to use?
I miss my other xp and dos boot options...
I LIKE keeping unused partitions hidden
Keeps my drive letters down to a manageable level.

http://www.osloader.com/
looks interesting. Never needed to try it tho.

 

[Guest]

Before I continue to fight with getting BootMagic to work.
I hope someone can tell me if it will or will not work ever.

BM worked on my 250,320 Gig drives but so far as soon
as I enable Boot magic on my Western Digital 750 Gig ...won't boot and
Partition Magic has error #110.

Then I've got to boot to Xp cd and press R then "fixmbr"
to get back to Xp pro.

Other programs to use?
I miss my other xp and dos boot options...
I LIKE keeping unused partitions hidden
Keeps my drive letters down to a manageable level.

Thoughts Very Welcome!
jmc

I finally got it working... (not on 750 Gig Hd)

To spare others the wear and tear I've dealt with...

I've found that Power Quest boot magic goes by the motherboard
CONNECTIONS of the hard drives.

Boot order in the bios settings is secondary!
It does NOT affect how Power Quest sees the drive order.

I had to move my old 250Gig Hd connection to come before the 750Gig
Hd connection on the motherboard.

Now I don't understand whats happening but my bios screen show the
following information...(different screens)

Sata3 - maxtor 250 Boot Order... Ch2 M
Sata4 - Optical
Sata1 - WD 750 Ch4 M
Sata2 - ST 320 Ch5 M

Sata lists one order and Ch?M lists another. ??

Anyway, boot magic works again and my partitions are hidden!

Don't know exactly what size breaks BootMagic... somewhere
between 250Gig and 750Gig.

Oh yes, XPpro ALWAYS uses the boot.ini off the FIRST Hd
Even if partition is hidden, So I can't have different Boot.ini files.


Won't boot from hidden partition tho... crash!

Thanks to all for thoughts given.
jmc

 

[Arno Wagner]

I finally got it working... (not on 750 Gig Hd)

To spare others the wear and tear I've dealt with...

I've found that Power Quest boot magic goes by the motherboard
CONNECTIONS of the hard drives.

Boot order in the bios settings is secondary!
It does NOT affect how Power Quest sees the drive order.

I had to move my old 250Gig Hd connection to come before the 750Gig
Hd connection on the motherboard.

Now I don't understand whats happening but my bios screen show the
following information...(different screens)

Sata3 - maxtor 250 Boot Order... Ch2 M
Sata4 - Optical
Sata1 - WD 750 Ch4 M
Sata2 - ST 320 Ch5 M

Sata lists one order and Ch?M lists another. ??

Anyway, boot magic works again and my partitions are hidden!

Don't know exactly what size breaks BootMagic... somewhere
between 250Gig and 750Gig.

There seems to be a 500GB limit in some hardware and software.

Oh yes, XPpro ALWAYS uses the boot.ini off the FIRST Hd
Even if partition is hidden, So I can't have different Boot.ini files.

Well, Windows is a toy, not a professional system. This is one
of the places were it shows.

Won't boot from hidden partition tho... crash!

Pretty stupid design IMO.

Arno

 

[Timothy Daniels]

:


I just saw this, and I wonder what JMC meant by "first HD".
Most if not all BIOSes for Windows NT/2K/XP provide a Hard
Drive Boot Order (which may be called something else by various
BIOSes) which prioritizes the HDs that it finds for control of booting.
The BIOS passes control to the MBR of the HD at the head of the
Hard Drive Boot Order, and the MBR passes control to the Boot
Sector of the Primary partition that is marked "active" on the HD.
You can control which HD gets control by adjusting the Hard Drive
Boot Order in the BIOS, and you can control which Primary
partition controls booting by controling which Primary partition
is marked "active". Of course, by hiding a partition from view,
the MBR cannot see if it is marked "active" or not and thus cannot
pass control to its Boot Sector. This not to say that with a partition
hidden that normally controls booting, you cannot control which OS
is loaded by ntldr. Any boot.ini can direct ntldr to load the OS from
any partition that is visible, even a logical drive in an Extended partition.
You just have to use "rdisk()" to point to the HD, and "partition()"
to point to the partition. The trick is knowing that "rdisk()" maps
to the Hard Drive Boot Order, and how the partitions are numbered
if one of them is an Extended partition.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

:



I just saw this, and I wonder what JMC meant by "first HD".
Most if not all BIOSes for Windows NT/2K/XP provide a Hard
Drive Boot Order (which may be called something else by various
BIOSes) which prioritizes the HDs that it finds for control of booting.
The BIOS passes control to the MBR of the HD at the head of the
Hard Drive Boot Order, and the MBR passes control to the Boot
Sector of the Primary partition that is marked "active" on the HD.
You can control which HD gets control by adjusting the Hard Drive
Boot Order in the BIOS, and you can control which Primary
partition controls booting by controling which Primary partition
is marked "active". Of course, by hiding a partition from view,
the MBR cannot see if it is marked "active" or not and thus cannot
pass control to its Boot Sector. This not to say that with a partition
hidden that normally controls booting, you cannot control which OS
is loaded by ntldr. Any boot.ini can direct ntldr to load the OS from
any partition that is visible, even a logical drive in an Extended partition.
You just have to use "rdisk()" to point to the HD, and "partition()"
to point to the partition. The trick is knowing that "rdisk()" maps
to the Hard Drive Boot Order, and how the partitions are numbered
if one of them is an Extended partition.

*TimDaniels*

My main concern, as mentioned in first message is getting
Boot Magic to work. It and Partition Magic see the Hard drives
in the ORDER that they are connected to the motherboard.
Bios Boot Order means nothing here.

So I had to switch drives around on motherboard till
my old 250 Gig was before my new 750 Gig WD.
and Boot Magic finally worked!

Xp is a pain with the bios boot order...
I plug a sata hard drive in to back up data and find
SURPRISE, the bios boot order has now switch all around
and the boot.ini is no longer pointing to the correct Hd and
paritition and I can't boot with out a rescue disk.
And this new drive was not plugged in on the main connectors
but on the add on sata raid chip connection.

Have not repeated the mess enough to see if adding the drive
changes the boot order in a consistent way so that I might add
a boot.ini line to compensate for the change.

I use to try to let XP handle the multi boot but I usually got
the 2 installations connected somehow.
Change resolution in one and it got changed in the other...
and worse.
Keeping things hidden made everything work and kept
things tidy.

Will have to switch products soon to one that will handle large
drives. Heh, unless I keep the small drive as a booter forever.

thanks,
jmc

 

[Arno Wagner]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 16:58:25 -0800, "Timothy Daniels"

"Arno Wagner" wrote:

[...]
Will have to switch products soon to one that will handle large
drives. Heh, unless I keep the small drive as a booter forever.

Not the worst option. It is a good idea to separate sytem on
one side and apps/data on the other side anyways.

Arno