Dual boot ?

[4breezes]

I have a feeling that I should know the answer to this, but it alludes me.

My main everyday computer is running Windows 2000 Pro. I have another, older, computer, with XP/MCE on the hard drive. That older system is not running, though the hard drive is good, runs well when I put it in this tower. So, I have my newer computer running an older OS, and my newer OS in an older non-op computer.

I'm not ready to give up W2K and go entirely to XP, but I'd like to have to option to dual boot into either system.

Can I move the hard drive with XP into the newer system, so that I have two OS's, each on it's own drive? How would I make that a dual boot system? Or would I have to go about this in another way?

I want to do this in the easiest way possible, with the least risk. Even though I have my system backed up, I'm petrified of losing some valuable data.

[Steve R Jones]

On the Win 2K machine - unplug the Win2K drive...

Plug the XP drive in.....You'll have to do a Repair Install since it's full of all the wrong drivers.

Once you get XP up in running....

Depending on the machine...You could go into the BIOS each time and tell it which drive to boot from...or you'll need to find a third party boot manager.

[4breezes]

Thank you, sir. That's the part I was missing, the way to get the two OS's to play together nicely.

The XP drive shouldn't be too hard to get up and running, then, since it has run on this system in the past. I installed it a year ago, on a new drive in this tower, to run a specific program. The problem is that all my data and all my programs are on the older drive, so I can't do away with that one.

[4breezes]

...
Depending on the machine...You could go into the BIOS each time and tell it which drive to boot from...or you'll need to find a third party boot manager.

Do you have any suggestions for an easy to install/easy to use boot manager? I'd like to dual boot Windows 2000 Pro and XP MCE.

I've looked at GAG, but on first reading it seems unnecessarily complicated to install and configure.

GAG, Graphical Boot Manager

I'll read its 'readme' and FAQ files again, but it seems complicated. Therefore, I'm looking for other possibilities.

[Steve R Jones]

As mentioned above - going into the BIOS and telling it which drive to boot off of is rather easy.

Re-installing XP on the second drive while the first drive is hooked up - Windows would automatically create a boot menu.

[4breezes]

As mentioned above - going into the BIOS and telling it which drive to boot off of is rather easy.

Re-installing XP on the second drive while the first drive is hooked up - Windows would automatically create a boot menu.

Going the BIOS route isn't really an option, easy as it may be, if my wife is to use this computer. She expects the system to run as she wants it when it boots, but with no additional input from her. It's the KISS theory in action.

The HD with XP was originally in this computer, and ran well. It has XP on it, and very little else. It was setup last year for TurboTax, which now requires XP. If I can save TurboTax I'd have no objection to re-installing XP. Going that route, XP would be on the third physical HD in the tower. Can I specify that XP install on that third HD, on partition "X", for example? Can I install XP anywhere other than on C:?

Even easier, is there any way to add the third HD, with XP already installed on it, and create a boot menu, all without disturbing XP or W2K?

BTW, to preclude question, my copy of XP is an original disk, with COA.

Thanks for your help.

[Rocketmech]

Forget the bios thing, like Steve mentioned, XP should see W2K and set up the Boot Menu selection before loading any OS. The worse could happen is you may need to edit the boot.ini
You mentioned 3 drives, might explain further about that. Are these drives IDE or SATA?

[4breezes]

Yes. My working tower, the one currently in question, has two hard drives, both 80 GB. Drive 0 is a Seagate, partitioned into C:, E:, F:, G:. The second drive, Drive 1, is a Western Digital, H:.
The motherboard in that system is a Gigabyte 7ZXE, running at 1.1 GHz. That system is running W2K.

The third hard drive is currently sitting in a non-working system. I'm pretty sure that third hd is a WD, somewhat larger. A year ago I had that third hd in the working tower, running XP/MCE. It was a new drive with a freshly installed XP, set up for the sole purpose of running TurboTax. As soon as tax season was over I pulled it out and put the two older drives back in. The two older drives have all my programs and data. The newer drive has only XP and Turbotax. All drives are IDE.

I have the space in the working tower to house a third hard drive, which can go on the secondary IDE connection. I just need to know how to go about it so that I have a dual boot system, which I probably will gradually convert/migrate to XP only.

I think I understand what I'm trying to say, and I hope have said it such that you all can understand also.

[4breezes]

Forget the bios thing, like Steve mentioned, XP should see W2K and set up the Boot Menu selection before loading any OS. The worse could happen is you may need to edit the boot.ini
You mentioned 3 drives, might explain further about that. Are these drives IDE or SATA?

I re-read your post last night, and got curious about editing the boot.ini. That sounds like it may have possibilities. I took a look, googled a couple things, and found my boot.ini.

Remember, this is a W2K system, running two physical hard drives. The first hard drive has four partitions. The second hard drive is not partitioned.

I'll paste in a copy of my boot.ini. Somehow, it doesn't look quite right. Am I correct in saying my system is booting from the fourth partition? Or is it booting from the first partition?

Boot.ini:
***********************
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
*******************************
End boot.ini.

Could I add a third hard drive, as mentioned earlier in this thread, and edit the boot.ini to make the system a dual boot system? I think there would have to be another addition/edit needed in order for the system to give me the choice of which OS to boot.

[Rocketmech]

Sorry for the long wait, busy weekend.

Am I correct in saying my system is booting from the fourth partition? Or is it booting from the first partition?

It looks like you have or had W2K Pro installed on partition 1 & 4 , IDE0 (primary master). The "timeout=0" is the reason you don't see a startup boot menu. I'm not sure of the history behind the 2 [OS] entries, but the 2nd [OS]entry can be edited out to prevent selecting the OS on partition 1 if it exists.

Could I add a third hard drive, as mentioned earlier in this thread, and edit the boot.ini to make the system a dual boot system?

Yes, you would need to add a line to the [operating systems] section of the boot.ini under the W2K line.

example:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /

Before you do anything you need to backup both boot.ini files for W2K and XP. It might be helpful to copy the contents of both to a text file to practice with before editing the boot.ini file.

[BipolarBill]

Don't forget that Windows XP is set up for a different PC. When you connect that drive to the newer PC, it's going to go nuts trying to reconfigure for all new devices and possibly crash badly. It will need a"repair installation" performed if you want it to work. After the repair, all updates will have to be downloaded again.

The smart play is to put in the XP drive as a secondary drive and boot directly from the XP CD.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Windows Setup should find the XP drive and repair it. Additionally, it should update the BOOT.INI to include XP as a boot option. It SHOULD. It may instead move the BOOT.INI to the secondary drive and ignore Windows 2000. That is the real risk. Personally, I doubt that it would happen. I believe that this method should work fine. I believe that your biggest concern will be whether the repair will "take". My experience has shown that repair installations result in a flaky OS that ultimately crashes in weeks or months.

At any rate, this method does not require a trip into BIOS setup.

It's your call.

[Rocketmech]

I was under the impression in your post #8 that the XP drive was stored in a non-working pc after it was setup and running in the pc you want to use it now. But, I got to hand it to Bill, he can sniff these mistakes out , so if he is right about the XP drive was running in a different pc since you pulled it from the pc you want to use in, then follow his directions. Otherwise, the boot.ini edit will work.

[BipolarBill]

Actually, you're right, Rocketmech. He did say that it was "working fine" in the second PC. I'm not sure where Windows XP was installed. If it was installed on the second PC and working well, there should be no device driver issues and XP should be stable.

A repair install is not necessary if the XP drive works fine on the working PC, but it would "automate" the BOOT.INI update at the expense of time. The manual update of the BOOT.INI is the best choice if XP drive works fine already.

If XP was *not* installed on the second (working) PC, a repair is a better idea.

Good call, RM.

[4breezes]

Good. I was hoping that the two of you would come to an agreement on this.

Yes, the XP hard drive WAS installed and working well in the tower I want to put it in as a dual boot. The only reason it came out was that it was not set up as a dual boot, and all my programs and data were on the W2K drive. I don't think there will be a driver issue. IF I get the boot.ini right, it should plug in and play. Then again, Murphy may rear his ugly head and let his presence be known.

I'll continue this tomorrow with questions about: 1) the fact that I seem to have two instances of W2K, and 2) the structure of the boot.ini. I'll write what I think looks like a good boot.ini and post it for your comments.

But it's getting late and I'm tired. I've learned that it's best not to do anything too important in this state.

I appreciate all your help and the time you're putting in on this.

[BipolarBill]

You can test which line in the BOOT.INI is by changing the "timeout" to 10 seconds and actually choosing one or the other while booting. One will fail and you can go ahead and delete that line.

Since the timeout is currently zero, one would guess that the first line is being used and the Windows (boot) partition is the fourth one. That is kind of odd. I'd like to know how that happened. That would mean that the partition with the BOOT.INI on it would be the first one since that is the default placement for it.