Re: Mission Impossible? Dual Boot XP and Vista?

Hi, Graham.

I see what your doing, (complicated setup!!!)

Well, I suppose nobody would set out to design a setup like mine. ;^} But it started simple and "just growed" over the years as I migrated from Win9x through WinNT4/2K/XP/Vista, from FAT to FAT32 and NTFS, and gradually from one to four physical drives, SCSI to IDE to SATA, including my first RAID 1 - with a few disasters along the way. My first computer was the original TRS-80 in 1977 and I've been dual-booting since Win95/NT4. At one point during the Vista beta, I was "octo-booting" eight operating systems: 3 Vista beta builds and WinXP, both x86 and x64 versions of each of them. As I often say, I'm just one guy with one computer and no net but the Internet, so I can ignore a lot of complications that others have to deal with every day. ;^) My system is complicated in some ways, but very simple in others.

The essential parts, I think, are the small primary partition at the front of each HDD, and the multiple logical drives in the extended partition covering the rest of each HDD. The startup files are installed on each of the primary partitions so that each of them can become a System Volume and be used to boot the system. Both WinXP and Vista always start in the System Volume and then branch to whichever Boot Volume we choose from the menu. That Boot Volume can be any primary partition or logical drive on any physical drive in the computer - so long as the files in the System Volume know how to find it. Any operating system can be retired by simply deleting or reformatting the logical drive that is its Boot Volume, and then cleaning up the Boot.ini or BCD.

There are a lot of features that I've only read about and never used, such as dynamic volumes and GPT (GUID Partition Table) disks. I haven't needed them yet, thank goodness. And I haven't even looked at Linux.

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:uSQnL4gAJHA.4172@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ok RC,
I see what your doing, (complicated setup!!!) my pc before (not so complicated!!!) had XP installed on 1 primary and an extended partiton with several logical drives to support further XP installs in multiboot config.
The only problem is, if the primary boot info gets corrupt you lose access to everthing on the extended partitions so unable to boot into any o/s. Also any partiton changes made cause windows to rescan and reset drive letters.
If you have an o/s installed on a seperate primary then it is independant and isolated from the others, making it a bit safer and each primary will be a `C` drive .
The only trouble is the limit on partitions for one drive which is i guess important if you need a large number of different o\s`s. Hence the need to install on logicals.
Good luck.
Graham....




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

.

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