Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations gkittelson on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Dual booting Vista and XP (USB drive)

Status
Not open for further replies.

libroos

Technical User
Feb 16, 2001
195
SG
Hi,

I've a HP Pavilion Tx1000 notebook, running Vista Home Premium. I was trying to dual boot an external USB hard disk (i.e. 2.5" mounted in a HDD casing and connect to the notebook via usb cable), but to no success.

The external usb HDD was previously setup properly via the following means:-
1. I took out the 2.5" HDD and mounted directly into the HDD bay of another HP notebook and setup Windows XP Tablet "locally" and was able to boot up successfully.
2. Then I dismounted the 2.5" HDD and put into USB HDD casing.
3. I connected the external USB HDD (Windows Tablet XP) to HP Pavilion Tx1000 notebook and tried to use the Boot options (i.e. Boot using USB Drive), but was not successful.

What I noticed was that the USB HDD indicated light blinked (spun) for a moment and the HP TX1000 got rebooted again, back to POST. I booted up from the main OS, the Vista OS and I installed VistaBootPro v3.3 on Vista. I added the "Windows Legacy" option into the BCD file and rebooted, trying to boot into the 2nd boot option, Windows XP Tablet, but was not successful either.

How do I setup dual boot for local hdd and external usb hdd?

Anyone has successfully configured dual booting Vista Home Premium (local HDD) and Windows XP Tablet (External USB HDD)?

Thks.

Rgds,
libroos
 
Have a look in Disk Management, which drive is described as Healthy, (System, Active, Primary Partition)? This is where all the Booting files seem to reside in my XP/Vista dual boot.

Here is the link to your original post in the XP forum.
thread779-1402288
 
Thanks linney,

u mean there should only be one Active partition? Can i put both Vista (C drive) and the XP Tablet (M drive) OS partition to be active?

Thks.

rgds,
libroos
 
Yes, one Active Partition. The one and only Active Partition, must be the one containing all the Booting files, in Dual Boots there is still only one Active Partition.

Have you got the XP and Vista booting files on C: drive? THEY ARE ALL HIDDEN AND SYSTEM FILES. Make sure you have the Folder Options/ View set to show these type of files.

XP files -
boot.ini
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr


Vista folder and file -
Boot (a folder actually called "Boot")
bootmgr

They all should be on the same Active Partition. It doesn't matter if the Operating Systems are on another Partition. These booting files must be on the same Active Partition.

When you sort that out, make sure the XP Boot.ini file is pointing to the XP Partition. Look at the parameters - multi, usually 0,
disk, usually 0,
rdisk = which drive, C = 0, D = 1, (M = some number depending on Partitions ahead of it),
Partition = which partition, 1 = 1st, 2 = 2nd partition on a single hard drive (or USB).



"BOOT.INI uses the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) convention to designate where the OS is located, and on which disk. The first parameter is either MULTI or SCSI. The SCSI option is only applicable to Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) disk controllers without enabled BIOS. The MULTI option is for everything else, including SCSI controllers with enabled BIOS. Numbering starts at 0, so MULTI(0) designates the first controller.

The DISK parameter designates which disk on the SCSI controller contains the OS files, again starting at 0. The RDISK parameter designates which disk on the MULTI controller contains the OS files, starting at 0. The PARTITION parameter designates which partition holds the OS.

Partition numbering starts at 1 rather than 0".



The Purpose of the Boot.ini File in Windows XP

Here is an example (from Dual Boot XP and Vista) of a XP Boot.ini file -

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

See if your friend's who might be dual booting will let you look at their Boot.ini file?
 
Thks linney.

I used Vistabootpro and EasyBCD to add WinXP partition (USB drive). The modification of the boot file was successful. however, during the booting up of the USB drive, my usb hard disk spin up and down again. I tried many times, but still the same thing. In the end, I reverted to the local HDD boot up (into Vista).

After booted up into Vista, I'm still able to access the files inside the usb HDD.

This is strange. How come there's an option offered in the BIOS to boot from USB drive, but I'm still unable to boot up from the USB cable connected HDD?

I'm using Samsung 160GB 2.5" HDD.

If the BIOS can offer the option of booting up from USB drive, I'm sure there should be some way to boot up properly from the USB connected HDD, setup with the proper OS.

But what have i missed out?

 
Copy the Boot.ini and ntldr and ntdetect to the root of the USB drive.
 
Linney your statement is both true and untrue at the same time "Yes, one Active Partition. The one and only Active Partition, must be the one containing all the Booting files, in Dual Boots there is still only one Active Partition"

I will explain:

libroos installed both OS's independently. both Disks have their own bootsector and run as an active disk on their own.
libroos installed and wanted to run the XP disk as its own boot.
This will not work in any way in the scenario above. Windows boot managers in any windows OS sucks. They do not swap the secondary drive and fool the system into thinking the OS is booting up and running on a Primary C: drive.
This holds true no matter if the secondary drive is USB, SATA, or IDE.

When libroos boots the system the Vista drive reads and boots as C: and the USB XP drive boots as d: or E: (any drive letter after the Optical drives)
so when Vista bootmanager tells XP to boot it is booting as a drive letter that is not the C: drive. all the Registry entries refer to C: drive as XP tries to load it's hive files and stops as C: drive does not have the correct permissions and files because of course the C: drive is Vista.

I do ALOT of Multiple OS on one computer. dual boot is a generic term and not necessarily correct.

one thing I have learned is the most important. load the OS without any other drive connected so it refers to C:
and religiously use a good Boot manager
I have not used this boot manager boot manager lately as I use an OLD one called XOSL (not suitable for USB)
But Bootit NG is a very good boot manager recommended by Fred Langa and alot of good techs. the downside is you have to pay for it ...the upside is you get tech support

this will swap drives and work as you originally set up the system.
 
Yes Dual Booting can be confusing and boot managers can make life simple. Trouble as I see it is that Vista already has its own boot manager, so how does that effect the equation?

I also wonder whether the stumbling block here is the actual attempt to get the USB to be a bootable drive in the first place? If it was trying to boot from USB, and able to do so (in theory) wouldn't you expect to see some error about "system32\config\system File is Missing or Corrupt" if it was looking at the wrong operating system?

"special" dual boot Vista/XP
thread1583-1370154

 
Linney....Nope the System loads a portion of the XP boot file then hangs....sometimes it hangs in loading a user profile...sometimes it hangs at boot and sometimes it just does just weird stuff...example if you have 2 XP harddrives one is D: and the other C: the D: will load the C: and just be all weirded out...then when you separate the OS (disconnect a drive) it will not boot.

I tested a usb boot just to do it in practice instead of theory and as I have a newer motherboard it recognizes the USB as a bootable drive and booted fine to it as an XP disk.
XOSL did recognize the USB drive as a drive and booted to it...I was supprised it did for the age of the program

you are right...if the boot sector is not read right you may get the "system32\config\system File is Missing or Corrupt" error. this also holds true if the primary partition is not active

I don't view the Vista boot manager as any better than the Previous Windows boot managers. I use the third party boot managers that load windows in their original load settings as though they are C: drive...each OS when it boots thinks it is loading as C: and is the primary drive

this works so well that I have my boot order as such and each OS thinks it is primary and if I remove the primary boot drive that has the boot manager the OS's will still load the OS that is the first drive in the lineup

1. XP
2. Vista #1
3. Vista clone of #1
4. XP Clone
5. Ubunta
6. Diagnostics FAT32 with XOSL

works great for me so far

The techs at Microsoft used the Vista boot manager and handicapped it so it is no better than any other windows boot manager...how about that....they did not listen to real world users again....they must be owned somewhere by Burger King as "they do it their way"....LOL

some of the critical handicapps:
no ability to Swap drive as primary
no ability to hide drive
no ability to change drive letter assignment (many boot managers have this issue)
ECT.....

libroos sorry about the rant ....lol. I am not against microsoft...just narrow minded boot managers built into the OS

 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top