Return to Single Boot Options

[Len]

Hi folks,

Am dual booting 32bit XP and 32bit Vista. On my old AMD motherboard I could
disable a controler and install each system independently. With this new
Intel Gigabit MB that is not an option. However, I would still like to have
both OS on the 'puter but not have them dual booting. In other words if I
choose disk 0 then it is XP that boots, and with disk 1 it is Vista. That
way, for example, if I wanted to go with 64bit Vista I could unplug the XP
Drive (yes I know, should have done this in the first place) and should
there be a foul up I could always boot up XP and still do my tasks.

Hopefully, I am making sense - just don't want to take any chances with two
operating systems that are running well but unfortunately crippled if one or
the other HDs goes down or is changed.

Thanks for any thoughts...

BTW, have Vista Boot 3.3 but do not see a "safe" way of accomplishing what I
need.

Len

 

[John Barnes]

If you are saying that you have the XP boot files on the Vista drive, and
therefore can't boot from the XP drive, just COPY the ntldr, ntdetect.com
and boot.ini files from the Vista drive onto the XP drive (root) and change
the boot.ini to point to the XP drive. If it will be booting from that
drive, you would probably need to change rdisk to 0

 

[AJR]

Your thought process is good - in a dual boot setup, Vista installs boot
files on the XP Partition, or drive. If you lose that partiiton, or drive,
you will be unable to boot into Vista without modifyning the BCD Store.

Bob's solution may be applicable.