T
Tom Scales
Timothy Daniels said:
Yep. That's what drove the applications crazy!
Yep. That's what drove the applications crazy!
C
chrisv
Timothy Daniels said:
Absolutely. On the Win2k machine I'm using right now, my
%systemdrive% is E:, and my %systemroot% is, E:\WINNT.
Every time I've done multiple Windows partitions on a machine, the
result (different letters being used) has been the same. If there's a
way around this, I don't know what it is (nor do I care).
C
chrisv
Tom Scales said:
Poorly-written applications. It's simply bad programming style to
assume that the systemdrive is C:. They should be using system
variables like %systemdrive% and %programfiles%, which will always be
correct.
Type "set" in a command-prompt window to see all your system
variables.
C
chrisv
chrisv said:
Change that to "multiple bootable Windows partitions".
T
Timothy Daniels
chrisv said:
Good point: The system drive and the system root
are not the same. The system root, WINNT in your case,
is specified in the boot.ini file, usually as WINNT or
WINDOWS. The system drive is also specified in
the boot.ini file as the value of rdisk() and it must be
a primary partition to have a bootable OS. The partition
in which ntldr resides and in which ntldr finds the
boot.ini file, is the "active" partition (specified by the
partition table) on the hard drive at the head of the
BIOS's boot sequence.
Regarding E:, did you ever explicitly name the drive "E:",
perhaps via Disk Management, or did that just get
assigned on its own?
Intersting. Whenever I clone my OS (WinXP Pro), the
resulting OS *always* calls its partition "Local Drive(C
"and the root of its file system is *always* C: . And
among the 6 WinXP Pro OSes in my PC, each one
*always* calls its file root "C:" when it boots up. And,
of course, the booted OS names the other paritions
accoding to some alphabetic algorithm.
*TimDaniels*
C
chrisv
Timothy Daniels said:
I just let them get assigned as Windows wants to...
Intersting. Whenever I clone my OS (WinXP Pro), the
resulting OS *always* calls its partition "Local Drive(C
and the root of its file system is *always* C: . And
among the 6 WinXP Pro OSes in my PC, each one
*always* calls its file root "C:" when it boots up. And,
of course, the booted OS names the other paritions
accoding to some alphabetic algorithm.
Hmm...
J
JPW
What if you connect two or three or four HDs to the
Highpoint controller? How do you then designate
the boot sequence?
What if the 1st HD in the sequence has in its
"active" partition (which may be its 2nd partition)
a boot.ini file that designates the 3rd partition
on the 4th HD to be the origin of the loaded OS?
What are each of the 4 HDs called in the Highpoint
boot sequence? What are they called in motherboard's
boot sequence?
In my current system, I have 3 HDs, all on a SIIG
controller card. There is an OS on the 1st HD, an OS
on the 2nd HD, and 4 OSes on the 3rd HD, and I
can boot any one of them. All that the motherboard's
BIOS knows is the model no. of each of the HDs,
and it uses those to name each of the 4 HDs in its
boot sequence. But the loaded OS knows each
partition as a "Local Disk", and it gives each of them
a letter, and the letter is different depending on which
OS gets loaded and which HDs are visible when it
starts up. So you see, calling any HD at the BIOS
level is very misleading. To get a graphic of what I'm
explaining, look at the Disk Management dialog box
via (rt-clk)MyComputer/Manage/DiskManagement.
You'll see that Disk 0 contains your OS, and it probably
has a single partition named "Local Disk (C
there can be multiple HDs, each containing multiple
"Local Disks", each one containing an OS. And these
"Local Disks" get renamed depending on which OS
gets loaded and started.
When you put one HD in the system, it will always be
at relative position 0 in the *HD* boot sequence, so
the BIOS will pass control to it. The boot.ini file in
the "active" parition on that HD then better refer to
the OS as being on the HD at position rdisk(0).
If you put in another HD, it can take the 2nd relative
position in the HD boot sequence (i.e. rdisk(1) ), or the
1st relative position (i.e. rdisk(0) ). So, by interchanging
the 2 HDs on the Highpoint card, you can control which
HD the BIOS passes control to, or you can do it by
explicitly inputing the boot sequence to the BIOS yourself.
By making the real position agree with what the boot.ini file
assumes, you can make the OS on the 120GB HD boot up
or not. If you don't follow any of this, you've already solved
your problem, so don't do anything.
*TimDaniels*
Well Tim, after all that, I think I finally figured out the problem.
Turns out that anytime both the new 120GB and 12GB are plugged in WinXP won't
boot.
For the heck of it, with all 3 drives plugged in, I used Partition Magic in the
Win98se (80GB) to copy the WinXP (12GB) to a bootable partition on the 120GB.
With any combination of IDE3 or 4/master or slave, a combination of Win98se
(80GB)/WinXP(12GB) or Win98se(80GB)/WinXP(12GB) WinXP boots fine.
But WinXP(12GB)/WinXP(120GB) and WinXP freezes no matter which drive I boot to.
So, no matter what combination I try, if the old WinXP(12GB) is there as well as
the new 120(GB) WinXP won't boot.
Maybe just hardware incompatability between the old 12GB (I mean "old") and the
new 120GB.
(note that I also tried all the different combo's prior to copying WinXP to the
120GB as in the original setup with the same results).
Jeff
T
Timothy Daniels
That's a tautology. Care to re-state that?
This won't be cleared up until you state the contents
of the boot.ini file on each WinXP partition, and
which is the "active" partition on each of the two
WinXP-containing drives.
*TimDaniels*
J
JPW
The boot.ini on both WinXP installs is -
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect
Partitions (as shown in Partition Magic) -
80GB - 40 GB Win98se (active/primary/ fat32), 40GB Data (none/logical/ fat32)
120GB - 20 GB WinXP (active/primary/NTFS), 100GB Data (none/logical/fat32)
12GB - 12 GB WinXP (active/primary/NTFS)
Not sure if this table will help (should have columns for master/IDE3/slave and
master/IDE4/slave where none indicates no drive) -
master - IDE3 - slave............master - IDE4 - slave
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Win98(80GB) none WinXP(12GB) none .....XP boots
WinXP(12BG) none Win98(80GB) none .....XP boots
[If WinXP(120GB) is added as slave to either IDE, XP hangs booting from either)
Win98(80GB) none WinXP(120GB) none .....XP boots
WinXP(120GB) none WIn98(80GB) none .....XP boots
[If WinXP(12GB) is added as slave to either IDE, XP hangs booting from either)
WinXP(120GB) none WinXP(12GB) none
[ In this case WinXP will hang when booting from either]
If either WinXP drive is set to master and is the only drive attached wether on
IDE3 or IDE4, WinXP will boot.
Jeff
F
Folkert Rienstra
Timothy Daniels said:
Still the same, obviously. There is little other choice.
What sequence? There are two sequences, the MoBo one and the HighPoint one.
Does it matter?
His MoBo won't know about it, it will renumerate the whole HighPoint controller
in front of the floppy controller.
So you have a smart bios, he doesn't.
Goss, you must be young. It has been that for ages.
Try tell it to the bios makers.
To get a graphic of what I'm
explaining, look at the Disk Management dialog box
via (rt-clk)MyComputer/Manage/DiskManagement.
You'll see that Disk 0 contains your OS, and it probably
has a single partition named "Local Disk (C
there can be multiple HDs, each containing multiple
"Local Disks", each one containing an OS. And these
"Local Disks" get renamed depending on which OS
gets loaded and started.
Right, so when you reorder your drives on the controller
your boot redirection in boot.ini will royally screw up.
In his case that is the HighPoint bios.
T
Timothy Daniels
That says that if this boot.ini file is accessed, there
is no multi-boot option - the only OS to load must
be the default (from timeout) or the one designated
by keyboard input (which is the same as the default),
and this is the OS whose system files start at the
WINDOWS folder in the root of the file structure in
the 1st partition of the hard drive at the head of the
BIOS's boot sequence (i.e. rdisk(0) ).
In short, WinXP's boot manager cannot start up
any OS but the one in the 1st partition on the highest
priority hard drive. You can't multi-boot with these
boot.ini files as they are. You have to add another
line that refers to the OS in the another hard drive,
perhaps rdisk(1).
As these boot.ini files are written now, the only
way you can multi-boot is by adjusting the BIOS's
boot sequence - either physically via (the BIOS menu
or juggling the position of the HD via jumpers or
cable position) - or by using a special boot manager
software.
I believe the key to all this is in the jumpering - what brand
HDs are they and how are you placing the jumpers to
determine Master/Slave or if you're using Cable Select,
what are the HDs' positions -
and in the boot sequence - which is strange if the BIOS
insists on naming the HDs even before the OS is loaded.
Care to explain your Master/Slave method and add
the boot sequence to the above table?
*TimDaniels*
T
Timothy Daniels
"Folkert Rienstra" interjects as usual:
Do you have anything constructive to say, Roddy?
*TimDaniels*
Do you have anything constructive to say, Roddy?
*TimDaniels*
F
Folkert Rienstra
"Timothy Daniels" <[email protected]> snipped the entire message
to not appear look foolish when obviously he hasn't a single clue,
so just resorts himself to typical roddy tactics:
to not appear look foolish when obviously he hasn't a single clue,
so just resorts himself to typical roddy tactics: