dual booting from differnt hard drives

anothermbdusted · Jan 12, 2007

i have 3 drives in raid running windows xp mce and 1 drive that ive had for a long time that has windows xp pro on it. i would like to dual boot the system how can i do this as my girlfriends info is all on the old drive and my stuff is on the new drives. reason why i dont want to transfer her stuff over is cause i dont like AOL and wont run it on my computer no more so shes got her own drive now....

ive tried to change the drive boot in bios but doesnt give me a choice to select only one or the other and thats it. i want a screen that i can choose the old drive or the new one to boot is this possible? please explain how if it is thank you...

redduc900 · Jan 12, 2007

Edit the Boot.ini in MCE to reflect the XP Pro install ( System Properties | "Advanced" tab | Startup and Recovery --> "Settings" button | System startup --> "Edit" button). It should look similar to this...

Code:

[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="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

... and make sure to change the boot order in the BIOS accordingly.

anothermbdusted · Jan 12, 2007

ok i found that but does not show that i have xp pro on the other drive at all only my MCE drives. i have xp pro connected to the master ide and the dvd/rw connected to the slave. i have the sata drives for mce connected as master drives in raid 0. am i missing something somewhere i didnt do correctly? and thanks for the response.

El<(')>Maxi · Jan 12, 2007

Somewhere in BIOS is a setting for what drive is first in the boot order, you need to set that to the correct drive.

anothermbdusted · Jan 12, 2007

thats the problem i think. cause i set the xp pro to boot first and it goes right to that OS but then it dont give me the option to select between the two OS's at all

redduc900 · Jan 13, 2007

You didn't mention which HDD you were intending on being the first boot device, so I just assumed that the drive with MCE would be the primary (hence the modified Boot.ini that I posted). Since you can boot to XP Pro, post the contents of the Boot.ini in this thread.

anothermbdusted · Jan 13, 2007

i would like to have MCE as the main boot and pro as the second...

this is what it states in that area you requested,have not added nothing yet:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

redduc900 · Jan 13, 2007

Add this line to the MCE Boot.ini...

Code:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

... so it looks like this:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

anothermbdusted · Jan 13, 2007

I just want to say thank you very much! thats exactly what we wanted the computer to do... again thank you VERY MUCH!

irgins · Jan 14, 2007

It should be fine just install windows on a separate hard drive (parititon)

It will read up all your hdds for windows at boot... So your'll get Dual boot neverless

dual booting from differnt hard drives

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