Re: Dual Booting Two Windows XP's on two Hard Drives

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

"Ron Sommer" asked:
Which drive contains the active partition?

Which XP can you boot?


Assuming that there is only one Primary partition
on each hard drive, the question about which partition
is "active" is irrelevant - if that's what you're asking -
since the MBR will consider the sole Primary partition
to be "active". The question should be "Which hard
drive is at the head of the hard drive boot order?".
That hard drive's MBR will get control and try to pass
control to the ntldr that it assumes is in the "active"
Primary partition or sole Primary partition on the hard
drive. Also, "rdisk(0)" in the boot.ini file refers to the
hard drive at the head of the hard drive boot order
when ntldr goes to fetch the OS. The default position
for the hard drive at the head of the hard drive boot
order is the HD jumpered as Master on IDE channel 0.
If there is no HD there, the BIOS will look at the HD
jumpered as Slave on IDE ch. 0, and so on until it finds
a HD with a valid MBR - which it will then present to
ntldr as "rdisk(0)". But this default hard drive boot order
can be changed manually in the BIOS by the user, and
so far, no one has asked the OP whether he has done
this, and so we still don't know which HD gets control
from the BIOS.

*TimDaniels*
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Boot.ini question
    ... isnt one in some bios. ... That was yours, and Rod's and mine, while Tim made a different one: ... relative to the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Dual Booting Two Windows XPs on two Hard Drives
    ... Assuming that there is only one Primary partition ... drive is at the head of the hard drive boot order?". ... That hard drive's MBR will get control and try to pass ... If there is no HD there, the BIOS will look at the HD ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Boot.ini question
    ... If some disks can't be booted then that's because the ... MoBo bios doesn't allow it. ... How would you then calculate the rdisk number out of the "hard drive boot ... Do they appear in the "hard drive boot order" even though they can't ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Boot.ini question
    ... that utterly flouts the whole point of the rdisk() parameter. ... Having the rdiskparam the ordinal in the hard drive ... One problem is that if the order in the hard drive boot order list ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Boot.ini question
    ... MoBo bios doesn't allow it. ... It's not the controller BIOS fault. ... How would you then calculate the rdisk number out of the "hard drive boot ... Do they appear in the "hard drive boot order" even though they can't ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)