Multiple Windows Boot Problem

[opportunemoment]

hello,

I have two HD's, one running Win 2000 and the other running Win. XP. XP was already on one of the drives and i made a fresh install of Win. 2000 on the other. Now it boots only into 2000. Is there a way to choose which one i want to boot from when the computer boots up.

-opportunemoment

[jkrohn]

I could be wrong, but I think you may need to use a boot disk? I vaugely remember if linux was out of the first 1024 cylinders or so you needed to use a boot disk in place of a boot manager. Not sure if the same appls to windows
Jkrohn

[Philip1952]

You might think of something like this. With you useing two different drives.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...p?sku=R75-1000

I am on my next build up.

[opportunemoment]

The Romtec Trios IDE Hard Drive Selector sounds like a good plan, but i want to try and fix it with as little money as possible. The strange thing is, it was working before i put Win. 2000 on one of the HD. I had Win. ME and XP on separate drives and when it booted up it gave me a selection of which operating system i wanted to boot from..Is there any what i can get that selection screen again?


-opportunemoment

[shigum]

Good news, you can restore that menu on startup. There is a file on your computer, typically the c:\ drive, called the boot.ini. You can open this file with notepad, and edit it to add the path to the winXP systemroot folder. It's a bit confusing, but here is a Microsoft support article about the naming conventions (arc paths).
http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q102/8/73.ASP

this will allow you have the startup menu, and select which OS you want to boot to. I'm not sure which OS is on which HD, but it should merely be a matter of copying the boot path in your boot.ini, and then changing the number of the hard drive in the path line. The parameter you will be changing is the "multi(0)" part. That is the number of the HD where windows is installed. Be careful, HD #1 is multi(0), HD #2 is multi(1). The numbering starts from 0 and works up. Make sure you do a save as command and overwrite the old file, and it should be good to go.

-shigum

ps. use the windows backup program to first make an Emergency Repair Disk in case anything goes wrong. That will allow you to fix the boot.ini if there is a problem.

[opportunemoment]

still having problems.....I searched and searched and could not find a boot.ini file anywhere,.....so although I have never done this before i decided to try and fix the bootloader menu. I booted off of my Win Xp disk and went to repair. I was able to add options to my bootloader screen but none of the new ones worked. (any way to remove the ones that don't work?) I also used the "bootfix" command to fix my XP boot files but i can't check to see it worked because i have no way of booting XP? Can any one help?

-opportunemoment

[fred123]

In w2k, go to control panel -> system -> advanced -> startup and recovery.

You can choose the booting os and the amount of time the window is displayed from this pane

[shigum]

If you can't see the boot.ini., go to the folders options control panel, and under the view menu, make sure you have the show hidden files, and folders, and show system files checked to allow you to see them. Windows hides important files by default.

[opportunemoment]

Still not luck...i changed the folder options to view hidden files and it still didn't show.?????

In w2k, go to control panel -> system -> advanced -> startup and recovery.

Tried that and it only lists Windows 2000. Any other tips you can throw at me?

-opportunemoment

[shigum]

Under the folder options, view menu, is another radio button that says hide protected operating system files. That has to be unchecked to show the boot.ini.