Re: Mission Impossible? Dual Boot XP and Vista?
- From: "R. C. White" <rc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:59:36 -0500
Hi, Graham.
Why not use one drive and create primary partitions for each o/s and use a suitable boot manager.
Win2K/XP/Vista will install on a logical drive in an extended partition just fine. Only the System Volume (the one used to boot the computer) must be a primary partition, set Active. (For lurkers, see KB 314470, Definitions for system volume and boot volume, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/ - they are NOT what most users think!)
For years, I've formatted each HD with a single small primary partition, followed by an extended partition divided into several logical drives. I install ONLY the start-up files (NTLDR, etc., for WinXP and bootmgr, etc., for Vista - and the appropriate boot sector, of course) into the primary partition. And I run Setup multiple times, once with each HD designated in the BIOS as the boot device, so that I can boot from Disk 2 if Disk 0 is unplugged or broken. All the rest of each OS goes into one of the logical drives. I have to edit Boot.ini for WinXP or run bcdedit.exe (or VistaBootPro) to be sure that each System Volume points to the correct Win/Vista installation.
Actually, I've almost stopped dual-booting and run Vista Ultimate x64 almost exclusively these days. But I do have one HD with the WinXP boot sector; when I want to boot into WinXP, I set the BIOS to boot from that HD. I've not tried hot-swapping my SATA drives, and I've never used dynamic volumes.
I've now transitioned to all SATA HDs (2 single and 2 as a RAID 1 mirror). There were many trials and tribulations when I was mixing IDE with SCSI and then with SATA HDs, especially with earlier motherboards that insisted on always booting from IDE! :>(
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)
"GrahamH" <graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:eDddeRu$IHA.4380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,
If i were you i wouldn`t bother with the extra complication of seperate drives for each o/s.
Why not use one drive and create primary partitions for each o/s and use a suitable boot manager.
You can create up to 4 partitions either all primary or a mix of say 3 primary and one extended partiton which could have many logical drives for the operating systems that can be installed on a logical drive.
You would then have your o/s`s on the 1st drive and could use the second hard drive for your data, making it safer.
Just a thought as this is baiscally what i do.
regards,
Graham....
"Optimus" <guest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:91f50c1905ad1fd117ec86eb2c9d8bfb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mission Impossible? Dual Boot XP and Vista
Hello Everyone,
I know there must be an easier way of getting this to run but
my goal is to install XP and Vista on
one machine using SATA drives. While I am almost positive I could
accomplish the same thing through VMWare, given
what I plan on using the OSes for, I want as little interference from
VMWare as possible.
What I would like to do is install XP on my Primary Hard Drive
and install additional OS's on other
Physical Hard Drives. Then hot swap the OS's and at Boot Up specify the
Hard drive I want to run in.
Currently, XP is running on my Primary Hard Drive. I just bought
a secondary hard drive which I had planned
on using for Vista. These are physical disk however and it seems that
Vista (or maybe any OS) will only install on
the Primary Active Partition. However, any secondary physical disk is
seen by Vista as a Dynamic Partition and
therefore incapable of being installed on.
I think I initially made the mistake of initializing the disk in
XP by performing a quick format with NTFS
and seeing if the drive worked at all. Unfortunately, when I did that,
I only had the option of creating a dynamic
disk. Here are the actions I've already tried in trouble shooting:
*Reformatting new disk with NTFS
*Running Installation from Primary Hard Drive with XP and installing
on Secondary Physical Disk
*Disconnecting Primary Hard Drive, Booting from Vista OS Disc, and
installing on only Physical Disk
*Downloaded VistaBootPro (but have yet to use)- I've heard that this
isn't quite what I need to do but am
willing to try at this point.
This has got me pretty confused as I have installed XP hundreds of
times (I work in IT). I don't think I've
ever ran into this type of problem before. Granted, most users don't
run multiple OS's on their machine - but
still, I didn't think I would still have this problem if the computer
could only see one hard drive in the
computer! Now I'm just plain confused.
Does anyone know what the problem might be? Or what solutions I can
try to fix it?
I'm currently about midway through the MCSE Certification and would
like an easy way of switching between
multiple operating systems. Because VMWare often changes the network
settine (with virtual networks, virtual IP
addresses, etc), I do not want to use VMWare for this heavily
network-based certification. Working with NAT, IPSec
and VPN is confusing enough WITHOUT the virtual part.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
--
Optimus
.
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