[mandude]

Hey guys, a little stuck here, I'm probably missing something easy, but if someone could point me in the right direction that would be awesome.


I have Windows 2000 on primary hard drive, and I have recently loaded Windows XP on my secondary hard drive. When booting up my computer, I would like to have the choice of which OS to load. How do I do that?


Thanks!!!!

[mphenterprises]

Hi ManDude. First, I have changed your Discussion title to give a clearer indication of your question. As mentioned previously, please be as descriptive as possible in both the heading of your Discussion as well as the post itself.

Now, the one application that I know will help resolve your issue is EasyBCD which is available here. I use this application on my dual boot system (Windows Vista and Windows XP). My setup is slightly different than yours since I have my Operating Systems partitioned on the same drive but the concept remains the same.

I do know that several of our other regular members have a setup similar to yours. If this suggestion does not work for your needs, I am sure someone will be around shortly to add to this Discussion.

[piyushsingh]

Easy BCD works with any kind of multi-boot setup. But in case you do not want to use additional 3rd party utilities , then there are ways . Since this is a win-win dual boot , just editing the boot file in the primary OS will do it for you. But just as MPH said - EasyBCD is really easy.

[mandude]

Well, it looks like the program does not work. Upon further inspection, it looks like the program is designed to be run from Vista, not XP or W2K. I am going to give iReboot (from the same vendor) a quick try.

[mandude]

iReboot does not work either. It gives me the following error message:



The error message was very similar (if not the same) with BCD. I am trying to do this through W2K.

Any other thoughts?

[piyushsingh]

I havent used ireboot but [~44270] uses it and he had mentioned somewhere that it is for switching OSes and not for getting boot menu options. I havent used EasyBCD other than vista , so i cant comment on that .


I can help you if you want to do it through the boot.ini way as i m aware of that method.


Boot to win2K and enable hidden and system files view . Then in the system drive , open boot.ini and post the contents back here.

[rgreen4]

Mandude - you did not mention whether or not you got an option of the initial flash screen about a "Boot Menu" or not. I have a custom built desktop on which I normally run Vista and XP on separate drives. Occasionally I insert a third drive with Win2K on it for research in answering questions.

Now one key is to install the OS on the drive when it is a solo drive. When you install the first OS, it should be a solo drive. Then when you get ready to install the second OS on the second drive, disconnect the cables on the first drive. This prevents the installation of the second OS from affecting the boot record of the first drive. This also works with Ubuntu as I had it on the third drive at one point to experiment with.

The only cavaet is that you cannot use identical drives to do this. When the menu comes up it does not list the OS and the BIOS has not gotten to that point. It has just found multiple boot records and lists the drives by model. Currently because of some changes I have both drives as Seagat 160GB's, one is a ST3160812AS and the second is a ST3160815AS, only one digit different. Normally I have Vista on a 160GB and XP on an 80GB so I can pick them apart easily. The default for me is Vista. Neither drive has any date, just the OS and applications, data is on another location.

No third party program, this works at the BIOS level. Now, you cannot suspend one OS and boot up the other, to change you must reboot. A full system scan in AV and AS will scan both drives if you want. Whichever drive is the boot drive will be volume C: and the other will be seen as volume D:. One advantage of the two drives is that they can be maintained totally separate. As I said, when I install the third drive with Win2K, it does not affect the other two, and none of them are affected when one is removed. I have not tried four, and could probably go to 5 since I have room for 5 drives, but that would be ridiculous.

I think most of these third party boot selectors are looking for both OS's on the same drive.

[piyushsingh]

installing OSes on different drives with others disconnected and then connecting all drives wont give you any boot menu as the boot records are independent in that case. For selecting the OS in this case , you have to select the hard drive to boot from everytime , just like you do on your system .It has the advantage that the OS are independent and can be easily moved around but we have to select the boot device everytime.

[mandude]

Thanks rgreen, that's exactly what I had done in the first place, as far as installing unique OS's. I had looked in BIOS before, but overlooked what I needed. I looked again and found it, I am now typing this from the 'other' OS!

But, if anyone can help me with my error message that I posted above, that would be great as well.

[rgreen4]

You shouldn't have to go all the way into the BIOS except to set the default boot drive. On my initial post screen where you get the options to setup, boot from network, etc, on my Gigabyt board <F12> will take you to the boot menu. Once selected, it then boots from the selected drive. The only thing is that if you do something that requires a re-boot, you have to be ready, for if left alone it reboots back to the default setting.

As to your error message, since it seems to be looking into a Windows folder for a specific file, it may not work with the OS's on two physically separate drives. I am conjecturing here as I have never used any third party boot sequence programs, just the BIOS level menu.

[mphenterprises]

mandude said:

>

Quote

Upon further inspection, it looks like the program is designed to be run from Vista, not XP or W2K.

>
>




You are in very capable hands so I just wanted to bring up a note that EasyBCD absolutely does work in both Windows Vista and Windows XP. As I mentioned, this is the application, including iBoot, to easily switch between Operating Systems. Now, the issue may be the differences in our setups. That is why I feel you are in good hands with Piyush and RGreen.

I will step back and let them resolve your issue. I will offer any additional information when needed.

[mandude]

rgreen - f12 does not work at anytime during the bootup process.



I will try installing those two programs from XP instead and see if that works. I may not get to that until this evening or even tomorrow.

[rgreen4]

Mandude - It is F12 on my system, it may be different on yours. When you first turn on your computer, as soon as you get the first screen hit pause. Look for an option labeled "Boot Menu" or something like that. Various machines use different keys to go into the setup screens, so they may use different keys for the boot sequence choices.
MPH - do you have both OS's on the same HD or are they on different HD's?

[mphenterprises]

rgreen4 said:

>

Quote

MPH - do you have both OS's on the same HD or are they on different HD's?

>
>



Hi RGreen. They are both on the same hard drive on separate partitions. Yes, I know that is not the better option but I prefer to have it this way. :D

[rgreen4]

That's the way I thought you had it set up. Thank's for confirming.

I don't know if one way is better than another, I actually stumbled on putting on two drives when I first installed Vista on my new machine and a question came up about XP and I removed the first drive and put in a new drive and installed XP. The question wasn't about operating XP it was about the installation and I did not want to mess up my 4 year old machine with a long tenured stable XP installation.

When I put the Vista drive back in, on boot I noticed an extra F key option on the POST flash screen. Then I tried a third drive with a third OS and it worked fine. But, again this is an aftermarket MB with a more robust BIOS than most manufactured PC's come with.

If I get the opportunity, I may take my HP Media Center and see how it handles two OS's on two different HD's.

[piyushsingh]

Earlier i had two OSes on two hard drives and i used the Fn key(F10 on mine) to select the OSes on startup but the POST didnt show any additional Fn key(as it did in your case) , just the F2 key for normal BIOS setup.
At present , i have two OSes on same hard drive and i am more comfortable this way , but your setup on diffrent drives leaves more room for experimentation . ;-)

[Rezaee110]

u should edit c:boot.ini

[mandude]

Update:

I finally got that particular error message to go away when trying to install ireboot/BCD...I had to update the inet framework or whatever it's called. BUT, I tried installing both of those programs from both W2K and WXP, BCD kept telling me that Vista needed to be installed, and ireboot just did nothing, it was like an appendix.

There is no boot option at all when booting up my PC...I guess my BIOS didn't want to have that option on the splash screen. No biggie.

What I can successfully do and what I will continue to do is to edit the BIOS settings everytime I want to load a different OS...I just change which hard drive gets booted. Fairly simple.

Thanks for all the help!

[piyushsingh]

I asked you a question earlier which you didnt answer but it is possible to get past this selecting boot device everytime, only if you want. If changing boot device everytime is fine with you, then its ok.

[mandude]

Ok, would you mind taking a second and describing what changing boot.ini will accomplish? How easy is it? And, even more, I am worried about the risk factor of messing with a system file.