Re: Dual boot system of Windows XP Pro and Windows XP Pro from 2 HDD's

"Lauris" wrote:
My situation was such that I've thought of precaution in not loosing system setup files in Windows XP Pro. This prompted me for carefull preparation and action in deploying clean Windows XP Pro installation.
I'm aware of license agreement terms. For that purpose I have 30 day
trial of Windows XP Pro.
So I've got to a point where I've had an old Windows XP Pro installation on one HDD and I've had an emergency clean install of Windows XP
Pro on other HDD. Both HDD are bootable and booted fine as
Primary Masters. Then I imagined a system (convinient for system file
and setting migration) with Windows boot loader to boot from one
HDD's OS to other HDD's OS.
This prompted me to look at boot.ini. I've edited added line to boot.ini
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Clean Install of Microsoft Windows XP Pro" /fastdetect
System did not boot to Primary Slave HDD. I've received an error message.
My question. Is there a microsoft boot loader which would boot Primary Slave's HDD's Windows XP OS. In other words, I imagine a system in which I would manually select option - Clean Install of Microsoft Windows XP Pro. This would prompt Primary Slave's HDD Windows XP Pro OS to boot. This
imply that Primary Master HDD's Windows XP Pro OS files would not be
used at all (after OS booted to Primary Slave HDD's OS) and in case of
failure of Primary Master's HDD I would be able to get (without physically
openning a PC) to Primary Slave's OS.
Is there a quick way of configuring Primary Masters HDD's Windows
XP Pro Operating System.


The HD at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order is the one that
gets control of booting. With the Windows boot manager, ntldr, you should
be able to boot any OS in the PC - in any partition of any HD.

In order for a partition to be able to boot an OS, it must be a Primary
partition and be marked "active". On the HD which is at the head of the
HD boot order, the ntldr in *that* parition will be given control. Your 2nd
entry in the boot.ini file in that partition was correct providing that the OS
was in partition 1 of the 2nd HD. Also, give the TIMEOUT value something
like 10 (for 10 seconds) to give you time to choose the OS to boot rather
than letting the default choice proceed. If the 2nd OS was installed in
isolation (no other partitions visible to the installer) it would have been
named "Local Disk (C:)", and when it starts up it should call its own
partition that. When the 1st OS starts up, it should call the partition that
contains the 2nd OS something other than "C:".

You can actually put identical boot.ini files in both HDs. The HD that
is at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order will control booting, and the
2nd entry in either boot.ini file will refer to the OS in "the other HD".

As for obtaining a 2nd copy of WinXP, why not just clone the 1st
installation? You can do that with a free 30-day copy of Casper XP,
downloadable from www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp . Just clone
partition 1 from one HD to unallocated space on the 2nd HD. Disconnect
the original HD before starting up the clone on the 2nd HD (very important)
for the 1st time. Then shut down and re-connect the 1st HD. Then either
OS on either HD can be booted. No activation of the clone will be needed
since the clone won't even know that it's a clone. If you add the 2nd
entry to the original OS's boot.ini file, the clone will have it, too. You can
identify which OS is which by either giving them different desktop back-
grounds or by putting a folder on each desktop having a name that identifies
which OS is running.

*TimDaniels*
.

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