I have two hard drives that I would like to load win XP on both. I want to create a seperate environment (dual boot) for both hard drives (one to use for programming/business, and the other to use for games). I don't want any games to cause conflicts with any of my programming/business programs. Any ideas on the best way to set this up or is this even something worth doing. Also, my system came only with a system restore disk and not the win XP cd. Any help would be appreciated!
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Win XP on two hard drives
- Thread starter korran
- Start date
Okay Wolluf, not quite sorted :-(
One last hurdle.
The diskette installation works just fine but the installation to my primary partition fails. Here is the error message:
"Installation of boot manager in primary partition is not possible. On the boot disk 1 there is no full cylinder below the 1023 cyliner limit free for the boot manager partition. Please install the boot manager into the MBR. Installation of boot manager aborted.
Also, just out of curiousity, I have another error the program is giving me. In the partition report of the second hard disk I see the following warnings on all partitions:
"Warning: CHS values from partition table and effective values do not agree"
The warning is cited in the help file but I'm wondering why it exists when the partitions were formatted using either Windows XP setup or PartitionMagic 8 - neither of which should have caused such errors to exist. Thoughts?
One last hurdle.
The diskette installation works just fine but the installation to my primary partition fails. Here is the error message:
"Installation of boot manager in primary partition is not possible. On the boot disk 1 there is no full cylinder below the 1023 cyliner limit free for the boot manager partition. Please install the boot manager into the MBR. Installation of boot manager aborted.
Also, just out of curiousity, I have another error the program is giving me. In the partition report of the second hard disk I see the following warnings on all partitions:
"Warning: CHS values from partition table and effective values do not agree"
The warning is cited in the help file but I'm wondering why it exists when the partitions were formatted using either Windows XP setup or PartitionMagic 8 - neither of which should have caused such errors to exist. Thoughts?
I never install to partition - always use mbr. Message sounds like it will only install in partition below 1023 cylinder - so presumably you haven't got a 'free' partition slot there. I'd just use the mbr, unless you have a particular objection.
I've had CHS warnings like that before (also having created partitions 'correctly' - though if you use different methods for creating partitions on the same disk - eg, disk management & PM, I think you may get this) - there's never actually been a problem in use (and in fact, PM 'fixed' them - but can't remember what I did with PM to achieve this - might have just run it, and it found & fixed geometry discrepancy). Author says boot-us does a disk geometry check and displays warnings if it finds discrepancies (it will also display errors for more serious problems - I've had that after ghost created a 'virtual' partition on my machine where there wasn't room for one!). So I wouldn't worry about it - run PM & see if it fixes it?
I've had CHS warnings like that before (also having created partitions 'correctly' - though if you use different methods for creating partitions on the same disk - eg, disk management & PM, I think you may get this) - there's never actually been a problem in use (and in fact, PM 'fixed' them - but can't remember what I did with PM to achieve this - might have just run it, and it found & fixed geometry discrepancy). Author says boot-us does a disk geometry check and displays warnings if it finds discrepancies (it will also display errors for more serious problems - I've had that after ghost created a 'virtual' partition on my machine where there wasn't room for one!). So I wouldn't worry about it - run PM & see if it fixes it?
Hi,
I am having a similar problem, and I cannot solve it with the solutions posted above.
I have 2 hard drives. Disk 0 is partitioned in three and in the first partition winXP was installed. After a while I wanted to install win98 to run old applications that are not supported by XP.
Since installing win98 would be disastrous for my XP I disconnected the disk and installed win98. Of course, winXP doesn't see the new operating system. I tried to modify the file boot.ini to be able to have dual booting, but I keep on getting errors.
One of the errors I get is the hal.dll error, which can be due to an incorrect setting of the boot.ini.
This is my boot.ini right now:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition" /fastdetect
If I change either the disk number or the rdisk number I get a disk configuration error and the pc says that it cannot find the operating system in the specified drive.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
I am having a similar problem, and I cannot solve it with the solutions posted above.
I have 2 hard drives. Disk 0 is partitioned in three and in the first partition winXP was installed. After a while I wanted to install win98 to run old applications that are not supported by XP.
Since installing win98 would be disastrous for my XP I disconnected the disk and installed win98. Of course, winXP doesn't see the new operating system. I tried to modify the file boot.ini to be able to have dual booting, but I keep on getting errors.
One of the errors I get is the hal.dll error, which can be due to an incorrect setting of the boot.ini.
This is my boot.ini right now:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition" /fastdetect
If I change either the disk number or the rdisk number I get a disk configuration error and the pc says that it cannot find the operating system in the specified drive.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Otto1680 - you can't do what you are trying. That boot.ini entry for 98 only works for NT/2k/XP. To use XP's boot loader you need to create a bootsect.dos file (which is image of 98's boot sector and add an entry like C:\="Windows 98" to boot.ini. See for help here.
Alternatively, download and install (in XP) boot manager at Run the GUI and create a boot menu. should just work (I've currently got 6 operating systems on 2 disks using this - did have 8 - incl. 98 & XP).
Alternatively, download and install (in XP) boot manager at Run the GUI and create a boot menu. should just work (I've currently got 6 operating systems on 2 disks using this - did have 8 - incl. 98 & XP).
I''ve been using boot-us for nearly 3 years - on various machines. Its never messed up my PC (read the warning - you can mess up your own PC!). This was after trying several others, which did occasionally mess up my PC! Remember it has a floppy disk option (for testing) which doesn't update your hard drive. Well worth trying.
Although your C: drive is ntfs, you could probably still use some of that tip - but would need to experiment (I've never bothered, as I avoid nt/2k/xp boot loader for multi-booting - i like my operating systems independent)
Although your C: drive is ntfs, you could probably still use some of that tip - but would need to experiment (I've never bothered, as I avoid nt/2k/xp boot loader for multi-booting - i like my operating systems independent)
Unfortunately boot-us didn't work. The pc boots fine if I choose WinXP, but if I choose Win98 it just hangs there doing nothing.
I'll keep on trying, but I think my only solution will be installing XP again
. Do you think repairing it will fix this?
I'll keep on trying, but I think my only solution will be installing XP again
. Do you think repairing it will fix this?I don't understand why boot-us won't boot 98 if 98 will boot on its own (does 98 boot on its own? Its partition is active?). But anyway, couple of things to try.
Swap the drives round - so 98 is master (install boot-us gui on it). Assuming boot-us now works for 98 & XP, you can arrange them in order you want on boot-us menu - so doesn't matter which is master.
If 98 and XP both boot when they are master drive, boot-us should work - I've done this and more complicated dozens of times, its always worked.
Or.
Swap drives round, and then do a repair reinstall of XP (This may or may not work, as currently XP's boot sector is on the XP partition. Also, it may play havoc with your system drive letter in XP. However, one point - you need 98 as the first drive if you want to use XP's boot loader to dual boot).
Swap the drives round - so 98 is master (install boot-us gui on it). Assuming boot-us now works for 98 & XP, you can arrange them in order you want on boot-us menu - so doesn't matter which is master.
If 98 and XP both boot when they are master drive, boot-us should work - I've done this and more complicated dozens of times, its always worked.
Or.
Swap drives round, and then do a repair reinstall of XP (This may or may not work, as currently XP's boot sector is on the XP partition. Also, it may play havoc with your system drive letter in XP. However, one point - you need 98 as the first drive if you want to use XP's boot loader to dual boot).
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