xp pro + 2003 server dual boot question

[Guest]

Hi,

I want to set-up my system to have xp pro and 2003 server in a dual boot
set-up. I've not done this before and wondered if someone could give me an
idea of how and where to start ? I have full versions of both OS and xp pro
is currently installed.

I've had a look around other forums and realise I need to partition the
drive and install server on that. How do/should I partition ? can I do that
when setting up 2003 server install ? or should I use 'partition magic' or
another third party method, as many seem to advise ? what file system should
I use for each aprtition ?

If someone is familiar with this sort of process, please spend a few minutes
explaining to me, it would be very much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

You'll want to 1st boot to xp cd,recovery,press enter for password,
then at cmd screen typeiskPart In DiskPart you can create the
partition(s),
for in depth info type:314058 at microsoft.com.For the multi-boot info,try
typing:306559 Both xp+2003 should run in ntfs.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

I want to set-up my system to have xp pro and 2003 server in a dual boot
set-up. I've not done this before and wondered if someone could give me an
idea of how and where to start ? I have full versions of both OS and xp pro
is currently installed.

I've had a look around other forums and realise I need to partition the
drive and install server on that. How do/should I partition ? can I do that
when setting up 2003 server install ? or should I use 'partition magic' or
another third party method, as many seem to advise ? what file system should
I use for each aprtition ?

If someone is familiar with this sort of process, please spend a few minutes
explaining to me, it would be very much appreciated.

You have a couple of options:

a) The easy way: Use a partitioning program to create an extra drive, then
install Windows 2003 on that drive.
Advantage: Very simple to configure.
Drawbacks: There are some dependencies between the two OSs: They
rely on the same boot files. Furthermore, Win2003 is installed on drive
D:
and must therefore always reside on drive D:. If you ever do something
to drive C: then you might no longer be able to start Win2003.

b) The modular way: Use a partitioning program to create two extra
partitions: One for Win2003 and one of 10 MBytes at the far end of the
disk for your boot manager. I recommend XOSL. It's free, and it
handles this sort of setup very nicely.
Advantages: Completely modular installation. The two OSs are
totally independent from each other, and are invisible to each other.
Each can be run by itself, even without the boot manager.
Drawback: A little more demanding to install.

Post again if you require further details.

 

[Guest]

& andrew Thanks pegasus for your repsonses.
Just to clarify what I should do:

1- create partitions (logical (c: for xp (already installed) d: for win 2003
(does it matter that my cd drive is under d: ? does it just get moved to e:
??) for each OS and one for data(f, all NTFS.

when looking for XOSL I also found Ranish parition manager
(http://www.ranish.com/) is this ok ?? I'd rather not shell out for partition
magic ( http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/ ) unless you think its the
only option.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

& andrew Thanks pegasus for your repsonses.
Just to clarify what I should do:

1- create partitions (logical (c: for xp (already installed) d: for win 2003
(does it matter that my cd drive is under d: ? does it just get moved to e:
??) for each OS and one for data(f, all NTFS.

It does not matter which drive letter you use.

when looking for XOSL I also found Ranish parition manager
(http://www.ranish.com/) is this ok ?? I'd rather not shell out for partition
magic ( http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/ ) unless you think its the
only option.

I have never used Ranish for manipulating partitions. If it works - great!

Here is the recipe to install Win2003:
1. Partition your disk.
2. Label each partition so that you can recognise it later on.
3. Hide the WinXP partition, make the Win2003 partition visible.
4. Install Win2003 in its partition.
5. Install XOSL in the XOSL partition.
6. Add the two OSs to the XOSL menu.
7. Hide the Win2003 partition from WinXP, and the WinXP
partition from Win2003. This is important!

And here is how to boot up without XOSL:
1. Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com).
2. Restore the MBR (fdisk /mbr)
3. Hide the WinXP partition (for example), unhide the Win2003 partition.
4. Make the Win2003 partition visible.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Here is the recipe to install Win2003:
1. Partition your disk.
2. Label each partition so that you can recognise it later on.
3. Hide the WinXP partition, make the Win2003 partition visible.
4. Install Win2003 in its partition.
5. Install XOSL in the XOSL partition.
6. Add the two OSs to the XOSL menu.
7. Hide the Win2003 partition from WinXP, and the WinXP
partition from Win2003. This is important!

And here is how to boot up without XOSL:
1. Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com).
2. Restore the MBR (fdisk /mbr)
3. Hide the WinXP partition (for example), unhide the Win2003 partition.
4. Make the Win2003 partition visible.

How does one "hide" and "make visible" a partition?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

How does one "hide" and "make visible" a partition?

*TimDaniels*

a) While running under XOSL: Use the inbuilt menu options to
hide or unhide a given partition.
b) Outside XOSL: Use a third-party product, e.g. PartitionMagic
(costs money!), or ptedit (free).

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You have a couple of options:

a) The easy way: Use a partitioning program to create an
extra drive, then install Windows 2003 on that drive.
Advantage: Very simple to configure.
Drawbacks: There are some dependencies between the
two OSs: They rely on the same boot files. Furthermore,
Win2003 is installed on drive D: and must therefore
always reside on drive D:. If you ever do something
to drive C: then you might no longer be able to start
Win2003.

b) The modular way: Use a partitioning program to create
two extra partitions: One for Win2003 and one of 10
MBytes at the far end of the disk for your boot manager.
I recommend XOSL. It's free, and it handles this sort of
setup very nicely.
Advantages: Completely modular installation. The two
OSs are totally independent from each other, and are
invisible to each other. Each can be run by itself,
even without the boot manager.
Drawback: A little more demanding to install.

What is the difference between using a partition program to
1) create an extra drive, and
2) create extra partitions?

How does the BIOS know in what partition to find the XOSL
boot manager?

Why not just use the multi-boot feature of Windows XP to
select between the OSes? I currently use WinXP's multi-boot
feature to select between different versions of that OS on the
same hard disk and on different hard disks. The BIOS
selects the hard drive according to the boot sequence that
the user has set for it in ROM, and then it starts the WinXP
boot manager on that disk (where it resides I don't know),
and the boot manager uses the boot.ini file on the partition
marked "active" to display the selection of OSes - which may
reside in any partition on any disk. Upon the user designating
the OS to boot, that OS then boots up. In summary, the
BIOS boot sequence selects the hard drive, and the boot.ini
file in the "active" partition on that hard drive is used to select
which OS boots. Couldn't this be used to select Windows 2003
Server as well? Does Windows 2003 Server have the
multi-boot feature? Would the OS with the multi-boot feature
have to be installed last?

In the above scenario, the non-booted partitions and their
file systems just appear as "local drives" on the machine,
and the contents of their file systems can still be accessed
like any other data, making it easy to pass files back and
forth between OSes by merely drag-'n-drop. I use it to archive
recent versions of my OS on a large-capacity hard drive in
a Kingwin revovable tray - 2 internal HDs for the 2 versions
of my Windows XP system, and the appropriate large
hard drive in the removable tray to act as archive medium
or as a quickly bootable backup. If the primary hard drive
fails, I can change the BIOS boot sequence to go to the
2nd hard drive - or to the removable hard drive - for more
boot instructions that will tell it which of the several OSes
to boot up from any partition on either of the 2 remaining
hard drives. Is Windows 2003 Server unable to be a part
of such a scheme?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:

a) While running under XOSL: Use the inbuilt menu options to
hide or unhide a given partition.
b) Outside XOSL: Use a third-party product, e.g. PartitionMagic
(costs money!), or ptedit (free).

How does one run Partition Magic or ptEdit outside either OS
and outside XOSL? IOW, outside XOSL, how does one use
Partition Magic to "hide" the partition which it is in to then install
Windows 2003 Server in the other partition? It seems like "hiding"
the partition it's in would prevent even its shutting down properly.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:


How does one run Partition Magic or ptEdit outside either OS
and outside XOSL? IOW, outside XOSL, how does one use
Partition Magic to "hide" the partition which it is in to then install
Windows 2003 Server in the other partition? It seems like "hiding"
the partition it's in would prevent even its shutting down properly.

*TimDaniels*

When you start manipulating partitions then you need to make
yourself independent of Windows. My version of PQMagic
lets me run a scaled down version on a Win98 boot disk
(www.bootdisk.com). The same goes for ptedit.exe: I boot
the machine with a Win98 boot disk, then run ptedit.exe.

In the recipe I gave to the OP I assumed that he had the
necessary tools to hide partitions.

I might add that hiding/unhiding partitions in this way is not
really something you would do in an operational environment.
It's only useful for setting up your OSs.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

What is the difference between using a partition program to
1) create an extra drive, and
2) create extra partitions?

A partition is the "vessel"; a drive is what you put into this vessel.
You can create an extended partition, then create several drives
inside the extended partition.

How does the BIOS know in what partition to find the XOSL
boot manager?

The BIOS always invokes some code that is located in the Master
Boot Record. When booting into Windows, the MBR code launches
some other code in the boot sector of the Windows partition.
When booting into XOSL, the MBR code activates XOSL (which
could be installed on a dedicated or on a shared drive).
It follows that XOSL can be deactivated by restoring the MBR
to its original value. Booting the machine with a Win98 boot
disk and executing fdisk /mbr will do it.

Why not just use the multi-boot feature of Windows XP to
select between the OSes?

It's a matter of taste. If you want total modularity and total
separation between the OSs then you cannot use the WinXP
boot manager.

I currently use WinXP's multi-boot
feature to select between different versions of that OS on the
same hard disk and on different hard disks. The BIOS
selects the hard drive according to the boot sequence that
the user has set for it in ROM,

Selecting the boot sequence in the BIOS is, in my opinion,
a little cumbersome.

and then it starts the WinXP
boot manager on that disk (where it resides I don't know),
and the boot manager uses the boot.ini file on the partition
marked "active" to display the selection of OSes - which may
reside in any partition on any disk. Upon the user designating
the OS to boot, that OS then boots up. In summary, the
BIOS boot sequence selects the hard drive, and the boot.ini
file in the "active" partition on that hard drive is used to select
which OS boots. Couldn't this be used to select Windows 2003
Server as well? Does Windows 2003 Server have the
multi-boot feature? Would the OS with the multi-boot feature
have to be installed last?

I'm sure you can do all this with the Windows boot manager.
Remember this, however:
- OSs should be installed on different drives.
- If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always run on
drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:.
XOSL can be made to walk around this restriction, since
you can arrange it so that every single OS runs off drive C:.

In the above scenario, the non-booted partitions and their
file systems just appear as "local drives" on the machine,
and the contents of their file systems can still be accessed
like any other data, making it easy to pass files back and
forth between OSes by merely drag-'n-drop. I use it to archive
recent versions of my OS on a large-capacity hard drive in
a Kingwin revovable tray - 2 internal HDs for the 2 versions
of my Windows XP system, and the appropriate large
hard drive in the removable tray to act as archive medium
or as a quickly bootable backup. If the primary hard drive
fails, I can change the BIOS boot sequence to go to the
2nd hard drive - or to the removable hard drive - for more
boot instructions that will tell it which of the several OSes
to boot up from any partition on either of the 2 remaining
hard drives. Is Windows 2003 Server unable to be a part
of such a scheme?

*TimDaniels*

Windows 2003 can do anything that the other versions of
Windows can do.

Everyone has his own preference of boot managers. If the
Windows-based boot manager meets your requirements
then I suggest you stick with it.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Timothy Daniels" asked:
A partition is the "vessel"; a drive is what you put into this
vessel. You can create an extended partition, then create
several drives inside the extended partition.

The BIOS always invokes some code that is located in the
Master Boot Record. When booting into Windows, the MBR
code launches some other code in the boot sector of the
Windows partition. When booting into XOSL, the MBR code
activates XOSL (which could be installed on a dedicated or
on a shared drive). It follows that XOSL can be deactivated
by restoring the MBR to its original value. Booting the machine
with a Win98 boot disk and executing fdisk /mbr will do it.


It's a matter of taste. If you want total modularity and total
separation between the OSs then you cannot use the WinXP
boot manager.


Selecting the boot sequence in the BIOS is, in my opinion,
a little cumbersome.


I'm sure you can do all this with the Windows boot manager.
Remember this, however:
- OSs should be installed on different drives.
- If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always run on
drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:.
XOSL can be made to walk around this restriction, since
you can arrange it so that every single OS runs off drive C:.


Windows 2003 can do anything that the other versions of
Windows can do.

Everyone has his own preference of boot managers. If the
Windows-based boot manager meets your requirements
then I suggest you stick with it.

I am unclear on what you mean by:
"If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always
run on drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:."

In my scheme, I archive multiple bootable versions of
Windows XP on the same hard drive, each in its own
partition, each with its own boot.ini file. (Of course,
only the boot.ini file in the partition marked "active"
is used by the boot manager.) When booting that
hard drive (designated by the BIOS' boot sequence)
the partition that I select from the boot menu - which is
from the boot.ini file on the "active" partition - becomes
the C: drive ("Local Disk (C"). The others are assigned
other letters of the alphabet by the OS. From time to time,
I delete two or three of the old OSes, and mark one the
partition of the ones that are left as "active". Then, when
I boot up one of the remaining OSes, its partition becomes
named "Local Disk (C" by the OS, and the other remaining
partitions are re-assigned to other alphabetic "Local Disks".
IOW, the assignment to C: drive seems to be dynamic and
according to whether it contains the booted system.
How does that agree with your statement
"If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always
run on drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:."?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I am unclear on what you mean by:
"If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always
run on drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:."

In my scheme, I archive multiple bootable versions of
Windows XP on the same hard drive, each in its own
partition, each with its own boot.ini file. (Of course,
only the boot.ini file in the partition marked "active"
is used by the boot manager.) When booting that
hard drive (designated by the BIOS' boot sequence)
the partition that I select from the boot menu - which is
from the boot.ini file on the "active" partition - becomes
the C: drive ("Local Disk (C"). The others are assigned
other letters of the alphabet by the OS. From time to time,
I delete two or three of the old OSes, and mark one the
partition of the ones that are left as "active". Then, when
I boot up one of the remaining OSes, its partition becomes
named "Local Disk (C" by the OS, and the other remaining
partitions are re-assigned to other alphabetic "Local Disks".
IOW, the assignment to C: drive seems to be dynamic and
according to whether it contains the booted system.
How does that agree with your statement
"If you install an OS on drive D: then it must always
run on drive D:. You can never run it off drive C:."?

*TimDaniels*

Many people install one OS on drive C:, the other on drive D:,
in order to prevent the two from interfering with each other.
You appear to adopt a different approach by selecting the boot
drive in the BIOS, hence forcing each OS to appear on
drive C:. You therefore achieve with a manual process what
some boot managers do via a selection menu. The end result
is much the same.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Many people install one OS on drive C:, the other on drive D:,
in order to prevent the two from interfering with each other.
You appear to adopt a different approach by selecting the boot
drive in the BIOS, hence forcing each OS to appear on
drive C:. You therefore achieve with a manual process what
some boot managers do via a selection menu. The end result
is much the same.

I select the boot *drive* using the BIOS, but the boot menu
(derived from the boot.ini file on the active partition of that
drive) selects the partition to boot from. Which letter that
gets assigned to which drive is decided according to which
partition is selected from the boot menu - C: going to the
booted partition, other letters going to the other partitions.
It sounds to me like we may be in agreement and that your
scenario is just a special case of my more general scenario.
Please correct me if that is not true.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:

When you start manipulating partitions then you need
to make yourself independent of Windows. My version
of PQMagic lets me run a scaled down version on a
Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com). The same goes
for ptedit.exe: I boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk,
then run ptedit.exe.

Do you have any preferences between PQMagic
and ptedit.exe ? Do they both do the same thing?

I'm intrigued by the concept of "hiding" a partition.
In my procedure to clone the OS on a "Local Disk",
I have to disconnect the hard drive containing the
cloned Local Disk before booting up the clone OS
for the first time. (Thereafter, I can boot the clone
with the cloned hard drive connected.) This wears
me and the cable connectors out. I had planned on
doing this electrically by toggle-switching off the
power to the cloned hard drive, and although this
works if the cloned hard drive is alone on its IDE
channel or if it's a Slave on a shared channel, the
new clone won't boot up if it's a Slave on the same
channel as an unpowered Master. One solution
would be to toggle-switch the jumper on clone hard
drive to Master while switching off the power to the
cloned hard drive, but that's getting too kludgey.
So if this "disconnection" can be done logically by
"hiding" the cloned partition, all would be cool.

But looking at Partition Magic 8.0, I find that I am
given the option of only "hiding" the C: partition,
not a different partition on another hard drive. Is
this the case when running PQMagic or ptedit.exe?
Can either of those utilities "hide" any of all the
partitions?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:


Do you have any preferences between PQMagic
and ptedit.exe ? Do they both do the same thing?

ptedit.exe is a very basic tool that lets you edit partition
tables and not much else. PQMagic can do far, far more.

I'm intrigued by the concept of "hiding" a partition.
In my procedure to clone the OS on a "Local Disk",
I have to disconnect the hard drive containing the
cloned Local Disk before booting up the clone OS
for the first time. (Thereafter, I can boot the clone
with the cloned hard drive connected.) This wears
me and the cable connectors out. I had planned on
doing this electrically by toggle-switching off the
power to the cloned hard drive, and although this
works if the cloned hard drive is alone on its IDE
channel or if it's a Slave on a shared channel, the
new clone won't boot up if it's a Slave on the same
channel as an unpowered Master. One solution
would be to toggle-switch the jumper on clone hard
drive to Master while switching off the power to the
cloned hard drive, but that's getting too kludgey.
So if this "disconnection" can be done logically by
"hiding" the cloned partition, all would be cool.

But looking at Partition Magic 8.0, I find that I am
given the option of only "hiding" the C: partition,
not a different partition on another hard drive. Is
this the case when running PQMagic or ptedit.exe?
Can either of those utilities "hide" any of all the
partitions?

*TimDaniels*

My experience with cloned OSs had not been good,
regardless of whether the two partitions are hidden or
visible: Windows has a tendency to locate the inactive
partition and modify the registry so that it ends up as
an unholy mixture of the two OSs. I am therefore very
careful to have only one clone on a PC, never two. If
someone likes to contradict me then I will cheerfully
accept their opinion, because I never took the time to
really get to the bottom of this issue.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

My experience with cloned OSs had not been good,
regardless of whether the two partitions are hidden or
visible: Windows has a tendency to locate the inactive
partition and modify the registry so that it ends up as
an unholy mixture of the two OSs. I am therefore very
careful to have only one clone on a PC, never two. If
someone likes to contradict me then I will cheerfully
accept their opinion, because I never took the time to
really get to the bottom of this issue.

I understand the reluctance. There are virtually no
authoritative references, experimentation takes a
lot of time, and few people have a use for multiple
versions of the same OS on the same machine.
As a single data point, let me offer my experience
with this situation. I've been running multiple versions
of Windows XP Pro on 3 internal IDE hard drives
(one of them in a removable tray) for about 6 months
with no noticeable problems. I remove one or more
of the HDs from time to time, and I delete old versions
of the OS from time to time (by deleting their partitions),
and nothing complains - suggesting that the OSes
aren't combining in any way. The only maintenance
required is to be aware of which partition on a HD is
marked "active" and to keep the boot.ini file in that
partition up-to-date because that boot.ini file will be
the one used for the boot menu when booting from
that HD.

*TimDaniels*