[piyushsingh]

mandude said:

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.

Its as easy as copy-paste , provided the exact thing gets pasted. The risk factor can be minimized if you just make a backup copy of the boot.ini file before editing. If it gets messed up(although it wont), it can be easily repaired provided you have the install discs for the OSes.
For suggesting changes , can you post the contents of the current boot.ini in the primary OS (i.e win2k) ?

[mandude]

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

[piyushsingh]

replace above with this . Copy paste exact.

{noformat}[boot loader]{noformat}
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT
{noformat}[operating systems]{noformat}
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

[mandude]

Doesn't work :(

It does give me the screen with the choice of the two OS's. When I select XP, it doesn't go there, it just gave an error message.

Don't know if this makes a difference, but right now the F drive is the drive letter of the other hard drive with XP on it.

[piyushsingh]

ok, the partition no. is messing up. Can you tell and list all the partitions on the 2nd hard drive i.e XP drive ?

edit ~ boot to XP drive by disconnecting other drive and post the screen shot of the disk management . I think XP is not installed on 1st partition of 2nd drive.
Message was edited by: piyushsingh

[mandude]

There is only one partition on the XP drive.

[piyushsingh]

Then it should have worked .

What is the error message you got ?

[mandude]

When I select XP, the initial W2K boot screen comes up (odd, I know) and says something like: "can't find windowssystemetc etc

[piyushsingh]

earlier you got just error and now you got to w2k screen and then error. Why two different things from same option ?? Anyway.

And that "cant find windowssystemetc etc" - the etc etc is important . If you can give the exact message , then it would be better.

[rgreen4]

Mandude - what are your system specifications? If it is a factory build machine, the make and model (Never Post your serial no. online).

If it is a custom or home built machine, what is the motherboard brand and model?

[mandude]

Error message is:

Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: windowssystem32configsystemd

[mandude]

rgreen, it is a custom machine, a few years old, but mother board is a gigabyte GA-8IEXP

[smax013]

piyushsingh said:

Then it should have worked .

What is the error message you got ?

I don't know if messing with the boot.ini file will work in this case. If [~103371] installed the OSs when the OTHER drive was disconnected, then I believe part of the process necessary for tweaking the boot.ini file has not been completed. I believe when you install two OSs on two drives when the second OS is installed while the first drive is still present and mounted, I believe the Windows installer modifies the master boot record on the primary drive to reflect that there actually IS a second drive with a second bootable OS. Then a modification to the boot.ini file is just "enabling" that second portion of the master boot record. If, OTOH, the first drive is disconnected when the second OS is installed, then the Windows installer does not know to modify the master boot record and thus there is nothing for the boot.ini file to find...and you are left with just using the BIOS functions to switch which drive to boot from.



But...I could be wrong...

[piyushsingh]

i think the mbr is updated if its a win-win multiboot automatically. I m not fully sure about this , but this way i have done it in past.

whats your opinion about this situation now - i just found the exact thing here - http://www.daniweb.c...hread30462.html . I hope i have not screwed it .

[rgreen4]

What I am not sure of is why the F12 boot option is not showing up on his machine as it is on my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P board. I installed each OS on its separate drive while it was a solo drive.

Mandude - I am perplexed as to why the two separate installations do not trigger a BIOS level boot menu, unless you BIOS version does not permit that. Your MB is basically a 2001 era board, socket 478 for P4 and IDE drives and my Gigabyte MB is a 2007 socket 775 for late P4's and C2D's and SATA drives. In the transition, multiple drives and OS's became more prevalent. Both boards have Award BIOS's, obviously of different versions.

Out of curiosity, since Windows XP and Windows 2000 are infact of the same family, internally referenced as NT5.0 for 2000, NT5.1 for XP and NT5.2 for SP2, is there a special reason you want to dual boot? There should not be any application that I am aware of that will run on one and not the other.

If you don't have any data at risk, I would suggest doing one of two things.

1. Reformat the drive with Win2K and reinstall Win2K as a solo drive. Once you have it installed, partition it with a third party partitioning program and install XP on the second partition. Then reformat the second drive to use as a data drive.

2. Reformat the drive with Win2K drive and reinstall Win2K as a solo drive. Then install the second drive and reformat it. Reassign the drive letter of the optical drive to E: or higher. Remove the drive with Win2K and reinstall XP on the second drive (now a solo drive). Reinstall the first drive with Win2K, ensure that the two drives are on separate ribbon cables, preferably the Win2K drive on the primary and the XP drive on the secondary.

It could be that part of the problem is that Windows does not permit dual booting of the same OS, and since both are a variety of NT5, it may see them as two installations of the same OS.

You have us all in an area where we are not sure of the situation, so we are sort of in a brainstorming session to see what works.

[mandude]

piyush - that does sound like a similar situation, but not the exact same thing. I have just reverted back to the backup boot.ini so I don't have to worry about that anymore.

rgreen - the reason I want both OS's is this. I have been using W2K for quite some time now, have been happy with it, but decided that it's finally time to keep up with the jones and at least upgrade to WXP. I want to be able to slowly make the transition from one OS to the other. W2K is set up how I like it, so while I'm setting up WXP (which may take weeks, with as much crap as I have to update) I can always go back to W2K if I need something comfortable and familiar.

One way or the other, I appreciate all the help, but have spent far too much time trying to troubleshoot this. What I will do, is just edit the BIOS settings everytime I want to go into different OS's. It is actually very quick and easy. And there is nothing wrong with quick and easy :)

[rgreen4]

I agree. It is just not as straight forward as we would have liked. We don't get aced out like this too many times.