Boot XP from second HD 4

[HenryAnthony]

Hi,

I installed a second HD, a Seagate 120 gb, on my Dell 4550. Both drives have XP Pro installed. Is there any way I can choose which disk to boot from other than changing the jumpers? FYI, my reason is to keep my professional files and system off the Internet. Rest of family can use the default installation and muck it up as they like

Regards,

Henry

 

[Freestone]

When I had this type of set up awhile ago, I selected the boot drive from within BIOS Startup options, first startup device, e.g. HDD0 or HDD1. Check there.

Just hope any nasties from the Internet don't also make it into your drive, despite it not being the booted drive. The only real safe way to prevent this is to have it physically disconnected. Personally, if it was that important to me, I'd have my own system, else barring that, obtain some imaging software and image my drive prior to returning control to the family.

 

[HenryAnthony]

Thanks for your response, Freestone. I assumed I could pick the drive from the BIOS setup but the drive is not shown as an option although it is shown as a recognized drive.

Regards,

Henry

 

[Freestone]

Did you look to see if there is a BIOS flash available to enable booting from the other drive?

 

[HenryAnthony]

BIOS flash? Where would I look. I just look all through setup and find nothing similar.

 

[firewolfrl]

Freestone, the BIOS option is a pain to use.

HenryAnthony,
Your Best option is to use a Boot Manager. I use XOSL and run 7 drives and 4 OS's in my computer with no problems
(1 IDE RAID,2 SATA drives, and 2 IDE DATA drives)
I have tried other boot managers but I like XOSL the best because of its Boot Swap option (makes the the drive you want to be primary active think it is the Number 0ne drive)

If both drives are C:\ and have been loaded with XP separately(I load the OS's with only one drive in the system) and you use the drive swap option you will have no problems.
there are also options to hide the secondary nonboot drive so there are no issues with virus's and spyware

there are alot of bootmanagers out there and some are very tricky to use so BACKUP your system before you start messing with the boot sectors.
here is the link:

http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

good luck


YEAAAA! GO SEAHAWKS.....YEAAAA!

 

[Freestone]

Yes, the BIOS option is inconvenient, but a quick way to accomplish what was asked. Definitely not suited for your environment, firewolfrl. I've also heard good things about boot-us (

http://www.boot-us.com/)

though I have no personal experience with it.

As far as the BIOS flash, that would be found at the Dell support site for your particular model of PC. Usually a download which creates a self-booting floppy containing the flash program and the flash code itself.

 

[firewolfrl]

Freestone,
you are right in the BIOS options and not working in my environment.(too many drives)
Boot-US I had no luck with that piece of software. it is a one month limited software and the eval has lots of handicaps. I have tested the full version and the demo and was not impressed.
you really need to do your research on boot managers and ask in a forum like this for the opinion of others and their experiences on this type of software.
you could lose your boot sector and maybe even the partitions your XP is located on (both disks)with software that you have not researched as to whether is safe or not for your system.

At least XOSL is FREE and does what I want. though you do need to read the help files before you start. I also use Partition Magic 8 to create a fat32 53meg primary partition at the end of one of the hard drives. I also make that partition a bootable DOS partiton. I then load it up with recovery software, Boot software, and the XOSL install. that has saved my bacon a couple of times.(make sure you also install a NTFS reader for DOS)
I also install the DOS version of partition magic.


I would not recommend a BIOS flash unless the USER was experienced and it fixed a specific issue. if you do flash your BIOS plug the computer into a UPS (battery Backup) before you do this. if the power hickups or goes out in the middle of the process it will kill the motherboard. I had a customer with this issue (what bad luck)

IF you have XP install or are using NTFS file system...DO NOT USE "FDISK" you will lose your data on the drive. I personally do not recommend using it at all.


HenryAnthony,
First and foremost you need to read about active partitions and the Hard drive structure and how is works with your OS

these links may help though they do refer to older OS's:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structActive-c.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;228004&Product=win2000

good luck

 

[HenryAnthony]

Thanks for all your replies. Not sure what I will do. Certainly will not do the BIOS flash thing - too scarey for me. Maybe the boot manager. Or, another computer. For what the family needs, I can get off pretty cheap.

Regards,

Henry

 

[wolluf]

Boot-us is an excellent boot manager (have been using it for 4-5 years), and its free functionality will do exactly what you want - with a floppy (which you can take away, so there's no chance of your family booting your installation by mistake). Just install boot-us, and run it to set up boot menu (ir should show both installations - you can choose whioh come first, how long before it boots default, name that appears in the menu). Choose the write to floppy option (if you use this, full functionality ia available, particularly it will boot from more than one drive). Once written, just make sure floppy is first boot option. This approach also does not update your hard drives at all - so can't cause other problems which you can get where boot mamagers write to mbrs, partitions etc. Without floppy, it will just boot first drive.

 

[Nelviticus]

Maybe I'm missing something but if both OS's are Windows XP, can't you just use Windows' own boot manager? In the root of each drive's C: there should be a hidden file called 'boot.ini'. This is a text file and in the '[operating systems]' section is a list of the choices you're given to boot from - in most systems there is only one entry. Just combine the entries from each drive into each file (don't delete any entries though!) and you should be able to choose your disk next time you boot.

Nelviticus

 

[HenryAnthony]

Nelviticus,

I already tried what you suggest. Upon boot, I am asked which system. If I choose the top one it works. Choose the next one and no go. Can't recall the error message - this is my home computer and I am at work now. Tried messing with the "multi" and "disc" settings but still no go.

On another forum, it was suggested that I boot from the system cd and do a repair disk on the second drive. Haven't tried that yet and, my cd is SP1 and I have SP2 installed. Not sure if this will cause an error.

For some reason (note that I know little about this area) the Bios will not recognize the disk in the boot setup. They see the floppy and other cds though. I thought it would be a simple matter of stickin' a new HD in, pick it from setup and go.

Thanks for your help,

Henry

 

[Nelviticus]

If the new disk isn't recognised how did you install XP on it? Did you do it by removing the old one, i.e. just swapping them, or was XP installed when the drive was in another machine? If the latter you might run into problems even if you could boot from it, as all the drivers will be for the other machine.

I'm not sure how much you know about connecting IDE drives but there are usually two channels (two connectors on the motherboard) each of which can support two devices (two connectors on the cable - well, three including the motherboard end). If there are two devices (optical drives or hard drives) attached to one cable then usually one has to be set to 'master' and the other 'slave'. This is done by setting jumpers on the drive. If both are set to master - which could be your problem - things probably won't work. You'd either have just one drive recognised or neither of them.

Apologies if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs!

Out of curiosity, when you boot with both drives connected do they both show up in 'My Computer'? If not, do they both appear in Disk Management? I can't remember where you find Disk Management in XP but on a 2000 machine you can get to it via Control Panel, Computer Management then the Disk Management node. It should list all the physical hard drives attached to your computer and show all their partitions.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[HenryAnthony]

Nelviticus,

I have no formal knowledge of HD installation. I figger' this wire goes here, that wire goes there - should work. I also read the instructions thoroughly.

Second HD is recognized but not in boot setup. It shows a model number and capacity in BIOS.

XP was installed using a Ghost image of the C drive. I did not want to use the SP1 disc and them download SP2 on a low end cable connection. Could this be a problem?

I swapped out the drives to do the install. Now both devices on one cable. First drive set to master, second drive set to slave. Both show up in My Computer and I can read from and write to both. I'll have to check Disk Management when I get home.

Thank you,

Henry

 

[Nelviticus]

No need to check Disk Management if they already both appear in My Computer. Ghosting it from the original drive is fine as all the drivers will be the right ones. The way you've physically installed it seems fine as well.

I suspect that the reason it won't boot is that as far as Windows is concerned, your original HD is drive C and the new one is something else, probably D. However, because the registry on the second HD is a copy of the one on the first, it will have hundreds of entries pointing to C rather than D. Thus when Windows tries to load from drive #2 it can't find some of the things it needs.

I could be completely wrong. There could be a nice, simple, easy way of getting it to work. However, if it was my machine I'd start afresh and re-install Windows from scratch on drive #2, deleting and formatting the partition that's on it during the install process. Yes it'll take a while to install and update and put your applications on it, but at the end of the day you'll have a working dual-boot system as the Windows installer will automatically configure the dual-boot menu when it finds the existing installation on your original drive.

You say you've tried modifying boot.ini and it didn't work. Try this though: using the boot.ini file on your original drive (i.e. whichever drive you can boot from), copy the last line and paste it so that it appears twice, then on the second entry change the bit that says 'rdisk(0)' to 'rdisk(1)', and change the bit in the quote marks to something like "Win XP second disk" so that you can tell the two apart. Save it and re-boot then try selecting the second entry - the worst that can happen is it won't boot with the second entry. If it does then hey presto, problem solved. If not I'd recommend you install Windows properly on the 2nd drive.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[HenryAnthony]

Nelveticus,

OK, I will try these suggestions this evening and post back results if any. That registry conflict thing sounds reasonable. Might just have to start from scratch. At least I have some new potential fixes I can try.

Regards,

Henry

 

[firewolfrl]

First did you try the second drive as master and see if it would boot?
if it does not boot then the boot managers are useless

second I do NOT recommmend the Windows XP boot manager using the boot.ini file. The reason for this is because of the way you have your configuration. your master drive is your primary boot as C:\ and you have cloned your secondary drive as C:\ when it boots as primary when you use the windows boot manager it sees the primary as C:\ and the secondary as (any drive letter after the cd drive)\: usually D:\ or E:\
on boot of the secondary through boot.ini drives read switched. But, your window system still sees the OS on C:\ (on the primary drive) and your Registry reads off of C:\ so in essence you have not switched drives or hidden any drives to protect against a system crash.

That is why I reccommended a third party boot manager.
wolluf's suggestion is sound and so is mine for XOSL.
both programs can HIDE the nonbooting drive and protect the drive from being read or accessed so in essence the drive is protected.
its even better because the third party software can fool the OS into thinking it is booting the secondary drive as C:\ and keep both drives independent and not reading each others registry.

 

[Nelviticus]

FireWolfFRL, the drive references in the boot.ini file have nothing to do with drive letters. Drives are identified via controller number and physical disk number - see this URL for more info (look under the heading "Multi() Syntax"):

Microsoft Guide To Boot.ini

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) is always going to be the first physical disk on the first controller and multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) is always going to be the second.

Regards



Nelviticus

 

[HenryAnthony]

Hey Wolf,

Been kind of busy so have not worked on the issue since Sunday.

Yes, the second drive will boot if set as master.

I looked into XOSL and Boot-us. Looks like Boot-us is a bit easier for me to understand.

Thanks for you help,

Henry

 

[firewolfrl]

Nelviticus,
I understand what you are saying. But, HenryAnthony is using a cloned XP that the registry refers to C:\ .
So when he boots to the XP manager the drives are preconfigured already as C:\ (bootsector primary drive) the second drive in the system (any drive letter after the cd drive)\: so when windows boots up on the second drive.It is a CLONE so it all the references in the registry refer to the windows system boot files as in a C:\ drive.
The registry references: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
can be changed but sometimes results in a windows never loads scenerio.

A good discription is as though you loaded 2 same OS's on the same drive

the true fix for this is to format and load windows on the second drive as a different drive letter than C:\ with the original primary drive still in the system ...then a boot.ini as you indicated will work fine.
and both OS's will load and work independently of each other.

But, you are correct in a normal install. The boot.ini config would work fine and there would be no confusion.
it is the Clone loaded as (any but C):\ (multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)) and sees its registry Hive references on (any but C):\ refer to C:\ that throws the loop and the OS on the second drive goes to the referred C:\ system hive files and loads as normal instead of using the (any but C):\ system hive files that the second drive has loaded

what also confuses the OS's is if it is an exact clone
then the OS's look at the base SID of the drives and think they are one and the same.

I am guilty of multiple cloned OS's in my system, But I use XOSL and hide the original from the clones so I don't get the weird errors from exact clones and the base SID issues.


I hope this sort of explains what I was try to say earlier. it is sort of a complicated situation and I sure hope someone has an easier simpler explanation then I could give.

HenryAnthony,
you are correct. go for what is easiest to understand...
As you play with the system you will learn more and that in itself will make things easier.
good luck and let us know how you faired