One OS on each HD, no multiboot at startup! Help!!

[doubledomer]

I have WinXP Home installed on a 160gig SATA drive. I added a second 160 gig IDE drive in order to install Windows Media Center Edition 2005. Both installs work just fine, but there's a catch...

In the past when I had set up a multiboot environment with Win98 and XP, I got the option of picking which OS to load at the boot screen.

With my current setup, I do not get the option to choose at all. The only way I can access the second drive (or switch back to the first) is through the BIOS. It works just fine, but is a little more cumbersome than just choosing it from a boot menu.

Even more unusual, when I am in XP, that drive (SATA) shows up as C:, my DVD burner is D:, and the second drive (IDE) shows up as E:.

When I start from the MCE 2005 HD, that drive shows up as C: and the original SATA drive shows up as D:.

I've looked at the boot.ini files on both drives and they are exactly the same, other than the naming of each individual OS.

The second HD (IDE) is hooked up as a slave with my DVD burner acting as the master.

In my BIOS, the SATA drive appears as the secondary IDE master and the IDE drive is primary IDE slave.

How do I set this up so that I can access the multiboot screen right from startup? Additionally, is there any way to have consisten drive letters within each OS?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[liriom]

On the systems properties, go to the advanced tab, click startup and recovery settings and make sure both OS are listed. If not, you might have to edit the start up.

 

[doubledomer]

I've checked the startup and recovery settings. It only lists one OS on each HD. I've looked into editing the boot.ini, but I don't want to FUBAR my system.

As I mentioned above, the drive letters change depending on which OS gets loaded through the BIOS setup. Does this have anything to do with how I have the HDs connected to the motherboard.

All I'm trying to do is have a boot menu at startup instead of having to do it in BIOS. Thanks for your reply. If there's any other helpful info out there, I'm listening.

 

[J741]

When you installed each OS, did you change the physical configuration of the drives? That is, did you un-plug the first drive in order to install the second OS on the second drive? If so, you may be FUBARred already.

When you install Windows XP, it will detect if an existing Windows installation already exists, and request from you where you would like to install the new Windows XP installation, and will add it to the existing boot menu (which is normally not displayed on startup if only one OS is listed in the boot.ini configuration file).

If you had physically disconnected the dirve containing the previous Windows XP installation, then the second Windows XP installation will not have been aware of the first, and would not have updated it's boot menu. Even worse, however, is that bot installations of Windows will think that the drive on which they are installed is referenced as drive C:, and all references to things like the program files directory, user profiles, etc. will point to the C: drive. Now, if the original C: drive is re-connected, the second drive will no longer be C:, but the Windows configuration on that drive will still try to access and change files on the drive referenced as C:. This will be very bad for you if you simply add this second Windows installation to the boot menu configuration (boot.ini) on the first hard drive.

- James.

My memory is not as good as it should be, and neither is my memory.

I have forgotten more than I can remember

 

[bcastner]

I would do a bootcfg /rebuild

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q291/9/80.asp&NoWebContent=1

Best wishes,
Bill Castner

 

[wolluf]

Remember to load your SATA drivers (F6) when running recovery console (for bootcfg).

I think you could also just edit the boot.ini file on the IDE (Media center) installation, adding the line:-

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

(as when booting from that, its drive0 and SATA is drive1 - this is assuming IDE is first boot device)

You can change the drive letter assignments in disk management (run diskmgmt.msc) - apart from system drives (but they're both C: anyway)