2 HHD, 2 OS's and problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter paul814
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paul814

Hello all,

I have 2 hard-drive one master one slave. I've got WIN XP on the
master and WIN 2K on the slave.

Now at startup I get a message to choose what OS I want to start, WIN
2000 or WIN XP.

2000 is listed first, I I choose it it starts fine.
If I choose XP I get an error that a file was not found to start
Win2000.

Any ideas of what I might need to do?

thanks
 
So really t looks like the WIN 2000 disk is trying to load my WIN XP
setup that is on the other disk. Is there a way for me to cure this?

In the WIN 2000 setup which I installed second I installed it on the
drive that was not used and not partitioned yet.

However when Iam in WIN 2000 I do see the win xp hdd and have access to
it. Although when I install programs it automatically picks the win
2000 drive to install on

What would I need to do for the machine to switch to the right drive
once I make the selection at startup?
 
In the root directory of the master drive are two hidden files: ntldr
and ntdetect.com. Replace them with the versions from the XP CD.
 
Well thanks for that info. However I decided to re-install XP because
at the time there were no responses to this thread. Now I have another
problem....Everytime I start to format the drive at about 72% the
computer just decides to shut down....no messages no nothing, it will
be formatting and then will just shut down. Any idea?
 
Well thanks for that info. However I decided to re-install XP because
at the time there were no responses to this thread. Now I have another
problem....Everytime I start to format the drive at about 72% the
computer just decides to shut down....no messages no nothing, it will
be formatting and then will just shut down. Any idea?
Click to expand...

doesnt sound like you are having much success at all

First of all i would remove all the hard drives (just unplug SATa or ATA
cable)

then put the drive in that you wanna format

try to format it with windows XP setup

then once you have XP installed and loaded switch off PC unplug master cable
from XP drive and insert it into the other drive. Now install Windows 200
get it loaded up and working

Now put win 2000 as on secondary cable have the drive jumpers on the back
set as slave.

put XP drive on main primary cable (same cable just different pins) then set
the jumpers on the back as master

re boot the system, enter setup (BIOS) by tapping delete as soon as u switch
the machine on, you get the blue screen

select the drive with XP on as first boot device

re boot, you might be asked which to boot from anyhow, choose XP (you know
it was working before when it was by itself from the installtion when the
drive was in alone) if it doesn't boot, try to boot windows 2k

if it boots then fine if not then you have a problem somewhere,

try swapping win2k drive with winxp as primary and slave (remember drive
jumpers)

try win2k drive without winXP and vise versa just to verify OS is working

if its all not working as it should then maybe you should consider just
having one or the other, why you want two windows OS's i dont know, if it
were linux/unix and windows i could understand.

if you still cannot format the drive then there maybe a drive problem, try
running some diagnostic software which many manufacturers offer for free
check drive manufacturer website

good luck, when PC's are like this they are chores not nice

hth
 
Well I've got a new problem, got the drive formatted and XP loaded frm
scratch.

Now at boot I dont even get a choice of what OS to boot to. It just
goes right into windows xp.

What cvan I do now?
I do see the WIN2000 drive listed in My COMPUTER as another drive
though and it still has the lable as win 2000 on that drive.

if I goto xp's my computer properties and advanced where I can choose
wehat OS to load only Win XP is shown
 
could I possibly edit the boot file....

[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="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

to ask me to select what OS and if I select 2000 it would boot off the
other drive? If so how would I do this?
 
Boot from the XP CD and run the recovery console. Then execute the
command, bootcfg /rebuild. This command is designed to examine your
drives for valid operating systems and reconstruct boot.ini.
 
Andy,

Thank you, this worked like a charm!
Boot from the XP CD and run the recovery console. Then execute the
command, bootcfg /rebuild. This command is designed to examine your
drives for valid operating systems and reconstruct boot.ini.

could I possibly edit the boot file....

[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="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

to ask me to select what OS and if I select 2000 it would boot off the
other drive? If so how would I do this?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Andy said:
In the root directory of the master drive are two hidden files: ntldr
and ntdetect.com. Replace them with the versions from the XP CD.
Click to expand...

ntldr and ntdetect.com are not specific a particular OS
installation. It is boot.ini that differs with entries for each
optional OS according to the partition position that each
optional OS has.

~*TimDaniels*~
 
Andy,

Thank you, this worked like a charm!
Boot from the XP CD and run the recovery console. Then execute the
command, bootcfg /rebuild. This command is designed to examine your
drives for valid operating systems and reconstruct boot.ini.

could I possibly edit the boot file....

[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="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

to ask me to select what OS and if I select 2000 it would boot off
the other drive? If so how would I do this?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...


For future reference, rdisk(x) means "select the xth HD in the
BIOS's boot order, starting with 0". IOW, 0=> 1st HD,
1=> 2nd HD, etc.
partition(y) means "select the yth partition, starting with 1" to
find the OS to load.
The partition containing the boot.ini file that contains this menu
is the "active" partition on the HD that is at the top of the BIOS'
boot order.
You can adjust the boot order manually in the BIOS to determine
which HD is searched, you can set the "active" partition in that
HD to determine which partition to look in to find the boot.ini file,
and that file's contents determine the menu presented by the
boot manager. If the timeout value is 0, there is no duration to
the display of the boot menue and control goes directly to the
default partition.
It should be obvious from this that you can put multiple WinNTs,
Win2Ks, and WinXPs on each of multiple HDs, and you can
boot to any of them using the boot.ini file on any one of them.

~[TD]~
 
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