vista and xp dual booting on seperate drives

fearanphoist

hi,

i have a desktop with two seperate sata drives. is there any way i can dual boot them . the os is on each drive already as the second drive came from my old machine.

thanks

f.

rudedog

Hi,

yes this should be possible.

The settings that you need are under Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup & Recovery Settings Button > You will see a button that says "Edit". Once you click on that you will see the contents of your "boot.ini" file.

You will need to modify this to get the other drive to appear at start-up. Do not change the lines that are there already this is important as it could mess things up on startup and leave the machine unbootable. You will need to add another line below the existing OS under [Operating Systems]. See an example below if you were using Windows XP as Primary and Vista on backup, secondary drive:

[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="XP on primary drive" /fastdetect (

---

Do not change this line on your system

---

)
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Vista ON Backup Drive" /fastdetect (

---

You will need to add something like this

---

)

Explanation:

"timeout" is for wait time in seconds during boot screen to select the Windows version to boot to. Make it whatever you want.

"default" line is XP generic boot-to info, and points to main C: drive installation. Nothing changed from original. LEAVE IT ALONE!

First line under "operating systems" beginning with "multi" points to the main C: drive XP installation (changed the wording to display on the boot screen to "XP on primary drive" for ease of use). DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS LINE!

Second line under "operating systems" (THAT HAS TO BE ADDED BY YOU) beginning with "multi" points to the XP installation on the backup drive. Note the "1" instead of "0" for the "rdisk" value. Make the wording for boot screen display "Windows Vista ON Backup Drive" or something like that.

Note that if you have more than 1 partition on either drive in this scenario, you'd have to tell the "partition" value where to look for XP in the appropriate line corresponding to the hard drive.

cpu-dude

rudedog wrote: »

Hi,

yes this should be possible.

The settings that you need are under Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup & Recovery Settings Button > You will see a button that says "Edit". Once you click on that you will see the contents of your "boot.ini" file.

You will need to modify this to get the other drive to appear at start-up. Do not change the lines that are there already this is important as it could mess things up on startup and leave the machine unbootable. You will need to add another line below the existing OS under [Operating Systems]. See an example below if you were using Windows XP as Primary and Vista on backup, secondary drive:

[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="XP on primary drive" /fastdetect (

---

Do not change this line on your system

---

)
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Vista ON Backup Drive" /fastdetect (

---

You will need to add something like this

---

)

Explanation:

"timeout" is for wait time in seconds during boot screen to select the Windows version to boot to. Make it whatever you want.

"default" line is XP generic boot-to info, and points to main C: drive installation. Nothing changed from original. LEAVE IT ALONE!

First line under "operating systems" beginning with "multi" points to the main C: drive XP installation (changed the wording to display on the boot screen to "XP on primary drive" for ease of use). DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS LINE!

Second line under "operating systems" (THAT HAS TO BE ADDED BY YOU) beginning with "multi" points to the XP installation on the backup drive. Note the "1" instead of "0" for the "rdisk" value. Make the wording for boot screen display "Windows Vista ON Backup Drive" or something like that.

Note that if you have more than 1 partition on either drive in this scenario, you'd have to tell the "partition" value where to look for XP in the appropriate line corresponding to the hard drive.

This won't work, Vista uses BCD and not the older boot.ini option.

OP, boot into Vista and install Easy BCD. From here, you need to add XP to the list.

Simply select it's type (Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3), the name you want to give the OS and it's current partition (it's current drive letter).



After this, make sure that the Bootloader (Advanced Options) is installed correctly by reinstalling, see below.

rudedog

cpu-dude is correct fearanphoist, my assumption was that it was XP, Vista and Win 7 are different in this regard.

I'm still in 2001 with Win XP!

cpu-dude

rudedog wrote: »

cpu-dude is correct fearanphoist, my assumption was that it was XP, Vista and Win 7 are different in this regard.

I'm still in 2001 with Win XP!

Cheers! 2001 was an easier time

Erper

ok... since u have 2 hhds... put this way, install xp on 1, and vista on another one... problem solved... no need for softwares or anything...
just on booting u choose in which OS u wanna enter