Another Dual Boot Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gobble.D.Gook
  • Start date Start date
G

Gobble.D.Gook

Hi,

read the FAQ and am confused ?!?!

I want to dual boot (in fact quad boot Vista / XP /XP/Linux, but we'll
leave that for now) and have three primary partions, lets call them
P1, P2 and P3). None are Hidden.

I have Vista installed on P1, XP on P2 and XP on P3. Vista was the
last to be installed, as recommended, but it did not find any legacy
OS so no boot manager screen appears (is this because I set P1 active
before installing?)

If I set P1 active (using GDISK) Vista will boot.
If I set P2 active, XP will boot.
If I set P3 active, other XP will boot.

OK, so now I want to use a boot manager, so I don't have to mess
around.

Following the MS instructions at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af778.mspx

then I can set up BCD, but I fall at two hurdles.

1. I don't understand what fixntfs /lh does, let alone find it
anywhere, and what OS am I meant to run it in?

2. Nowhere does it seem to allow you to point to P2 or P3 as the place
where XP is.

So when I choose XP, I just get a message about not finding ntloader.

Also, I am assuming that I would have to use BCD to choose to boot to
a 'legacy' OS - ie XP on P2, and the use the boot.ini in that to
choose between P2 and P3. Is that the case

Can anyone help out on how to set up this multiboot?

TIA
 
I suggest you use VistaBootPro to add a legacy os to your boot
http://www.vistabootpro.org/
There is no boot.ini in the Vista boot, it transfers control to the ntldr
file which reads the boot.ini and ntdetect.com files to finish the boot.
If you installed Vista last and didn't change boot priority, I assume you
may have overwritten those files which you will have to add.
 
Gobble.D.Gook said:
Hi,

read the FAQ and am confused ?!?!

I want to dual boot (in fact quad boot Vista / XP /XP/Linux, but we'll
leave that for now) and have three primary partions, lets call them
P1, P2 and P3). None are Hidden.

I have Vista installed on P1, XP on P2 and XP on P3. Vista was the
last to be installed, as recommended, but it did not find any legacy
OS so no boot manager screen appears (is this because I set P1 active
before installing?)

If I set P1 active (using GDISK) Vista will boot.
If I set P2 active, XP will boot.
If I set P3 active, other XP will boot.

OK, so now I want to use a boot manager, so I don't have to mess
around.

Following the MS instructions at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af778.mspx

then I can set up BCD, but I fall at two hurdles.

1. I don't understand what fixntfs /lh does, let alone find it
anywhere, and what OS am I meant to run it in?

2. Nowhere does it seem to allow you to point to P2 or P3 as the place
where XP is.

So when I choose XP, I just get a message about not finding ntloader.

Also, I am assuming that I would have to use BCD to choose to boot to
a 'legacy' OS - ie XP on P2, and the use the boot.ini in that to
choose between P2 and P3. Is that the case

Can anyone help out on how to set up this multiboot?
Click to expand...

Gobble:

Do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy of BootIt NG. Why get
yourself involved with the Vista boot manager mess if you don't need to?

David Wilkinson
 
Well you've been told to get a few other boot managers, but I believe no one
has attempted to really answer your question. So yes I believe you're right.
When I made the partition active that I installed vista to, it made vista
believe it was the only active OS and you must switch partitions with
whatever you made the partition active with. When I installed vista from
another partition into a different partition that was not active vista found
the other OS (Windows Media Center for me,) and gave me a choice of which OS
to boot into.

--
David Hettel

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group for everyone
to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions addressed directly to me in
E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

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