boot questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter promicro
  • Start date Start date
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promicro

Hi,

I'd like to know when booting from a fixed disk the os looks for the 1st
physical drive or looks for the 1st drive in the 'hard disk boot
priority' list of the bios setup.

I have 2 sata drives running Windows 2000 on my 1st physical drive and
have now added Windows XPpro on a second physical drive. Both drives are
NTFS. After installing XP and switching the boot priority putting drive
2 first the system boots nicely to XP but when switching drive 1 back to
the first position in the boot priority I get the familiar error message
that indicates I'm on the wrong drive.

Drive 1 has the Win2K boot.ini and ntldr and ntdetect, and drive 2 has
the XP versions of these. I have tried swapping these files, the boot
priority disk, and booting from a floppy with no access to my Win2K. I
have also booted from the Win2K cd and ran fixboot, fixmbr and chkdsk
with the same results.

I need to be able to run my Win2K as well as XP and appreciate any help
you can give me.

thanks to all,

bob
 
I dont know much about dual boot, but as far as I'm aware the boot partition
is on the first drive & remains so even if you install winxp on drive two,
thats assuming you didnt disconnect drive 1 in the install of winxp.
I'd have expected when booting for you have been offered the option to
select which o/s you wanted to run, you dont swap the boot drive.
I could be wrong of course and it maybe that a boot loader is required.
Maybe google for dual boot, I'm sure you'll get the answer.
 
DL said:
I dont know much about dual boot, but as far as I'm aware the boot partition
is on the first drive & remains so even if you install winxp on drive two,
thats assuming you didnt disconnect drive 1 in the install of winxp.
I'd have expected when booting for you have been offered the option to
select which o/s you wanted to run, you dont swap the boot drive.
I could be wrong of course and it maybe that a boot loader is required.
Maybe google for dual boot, I'm sure you'll get the answer.
Click to expand...


Yes

If the first drive was in the machine and kept as the first boot priority
(after the cdrom)
the "boot" files should only have been written to the first drive
and they should not have been on the second at all...
so I suspect that when XP was installed, either the first drive had been
disconnected
or the second drive placed as the first boot priority after cdrom.

Here is one possible way to fix the problem:

set drive two as priority
then boot to XP and run msconfig

in the boot.ini tab have it "check all boot paths
and see if it can add Win2k

If that works, just leave your bios as it is.


If it does not work,
then set the first drive as first priority (after cd rom)

then boot from your xp cd
and issue the command fixboot from the repair console
 
Dave said:
The simplest thing to do would be to put the disk arrangement back the
way it was originally, then start a clean installation of Windows XP.
Philo's idea may work but be prepared for this one.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249321
Click to expand...
tried everything - cannot boot 2000 only XP...
cannot even boot from a floppy - I would try Acronis Disk Director
except that the last time I did it trashed my entire drive 0.

thanks, bob
 
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