Slave drive, modem drivers

[William B. Lurie]

My PC came with XP Pro, and with a Conexant 56K modem and drivers.
I installed a Slave hard drive and put XP Pro on it as a backup or spare

system, but it cannot 'see' the Master hard drive. How do I find and
install such drivers on my Slave drive? Trying to download them is an
almost impossible task......I've searched and searched and really can't
identify the right drivers to download.

Thank you.

William B. Lurie

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, again, Bill.

I just responded to your other post, about dual-booting.

Now, it sounds like I may have misunderstood your other post, because you
mention significant facts here that you didn't mention there. In the other
post, you said your first HD had Win98 installed; this post says the first
HD has WinXP pre-installed. Are we talking about the same computer here?

HOW did you install WinXP? The proper way to add WinXP to an existing
Win9x/ME or WinXP installation is to hook up your master and slave hard
drives, then boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and let it automatically handle
everything from partitioning and formatting the second drive to installing
WinXP and creating the dual-boot system. When you add a new WinXP to a
system that already has WinXP, the opening menu should let you choose which
copy to start each time you boot. While installing WinXP, it should have
detected all the hardware you had connected at the time and installed
drivers for it. Adding new hardware later is usually straightforward,
following instructions from the hardware maker to connect it and install
drivers. Many drivers are "native" on the WinXP CD-ROM; others must be
installed from a CD-ROM accompanying the device or from the device maker's
website.

Your Conexant modem should have been preinstalled with the pre-installed
WinXP Pro. But, each installation of WinXP stands alone, so the modem would
have had to be installed again for the second copy of WinXP. It will use
the same physical connection, of course, but the drivers will need to be
installed so that the Registry can be updated. Likewise, any application
that you plan to run from the second copy of WinXP will need to be installed
again so that it can make the proper entries in THAT copy of the WinXP
Registry. WinXP can easily see and use files on another volume, no matter
which physical drive it is on, but it cannot use the Registry from a
different installation of WinXP, even if it can see the files that make up
that Registry.

You said your new WinXP "cannot 'see' the Master hard drive". I don't
understand that at all. WinXP should be able to see any volume on any drive
in your computer, unless you've taken steps to hide it.

Could you clarify just how your computer is set up, physically? How many
hard drives? How many partitions? Are you using a third-party boot
manager?

RC

 

[William B. Lurie]

Sorry, RC, I thought I made it clear, but perhaps I misstated something.

My PC came with one hard drive. That is my Master, it is not
partitioned, and it has XP Pro on it.

I took out that drive (temporarily) and put in another drive, jumpered
it as Master, and partitioned it, and installed 98 in the first partition,
and then XP Pro in the second partition.

I then re-jumpered the partitioned drive as Slave, put the real Master
in as Master, connected the partitioned drive as Slave, and that's where
I stand (or sit, actually).

I use no third-party partition-ware, although I do use Partition Magic
just to look at the whole system, so that I know what is labelled what.
I tried BootMagic for a while, but for reasons not pertinent I took it
off. Suffice to say that it removes too much control from me.

While running my Master drive XP, as I'm doing now, I have access
to all information on all drives. When I boot to the Slave drive, I can
boot to either partition, but once in that operating system, no other
operating system can be accessed. Specifically, Partition Magic sees
all the operating systems, and even gives them drive letters, but I
can't access other partitions or drives when in either of the Slave
partitions. Have I been specific enough now? Do you want to tell me
any more/

Bill L.
__________________________________________________________-


When I

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bill.

I think I understand the situation now.

My PC came with one hard drive. That is my Master, it is not
partitioned, and it has XP Pro on it.
OK.

I took out that drive (temporarily) and put in another drive, jumpered
it as Master, and partitioned it, and installed 98 in the first partition,
and then XP Pro in the second partition.

So far, so good. You now have a single HD with both Win98 and WinXP,
dual-booting.

I then re-jumpered the partitioned drive as Slave, put the real Master
in as Master, connected the partitioned drive as Slave, and that's where
I stand (or sit, actually).

Whoops! Now you have your original HD with WinXP installed in its only
partition. You can boot to WinXP, but C:\boot.ini knows nothing of Win98 or
the other copy of WinXP. You should be able to SEE both partitions on the
second drive and USE them normally. With the proper edit of C:\boot.ini,
you probably could boot to that second copy of WinXP. IF C: is formatted
FAT32, you should be able to create a triple-boot situation with the single
copy of Win98 and the two copies of WinXP. If C: is formatted NTFS, though,
you can't do this because, no matter where Win98 is installed, it can't boot
unless the System Partition (Drive C is FAT(16) or FAT32. In fact, Win98
can't even SEE a volume formatted NTFS.

The big question now is whether Drive C: (your Master) is formatted FAT32 or
NTFS. And the second big question is: How do you want to end up? Do you
want to boot Win98, WinXP & WinXP? Or some other combination.

Post back with that information and we probably can tell you how to get
there from here.

RC

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bill.

OK. If you're happy, I'm happy. ;<)

If you need further guidance, please post back to the newsgroup.

RC