re: Dual-boot Windows XP w/ Win XP on same PC
Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 8:33 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by C K
(6908 messages posted)
Editing the boot.ini won't help if both physical drive's copy of Windows was installed
to a C enumerated drive. You can't boot the second disk's Windows drive as D if
it was originally C. If you want to have Windows boot managar have the option to
do this from the first drives boot.ini, you will have to run a repair install on
the second drive so that the registry of the second drives WIndows will be "repaired".
This is necessary so that Windows and Apps that looked for everything on a C drive,
will now look for the new drive letter which will be the D drive now.
To dual boot with 2 drives with installs to a C designated drive, you can use the
BIOS to select the drive to boot first. That's the way some of us dual boot. More
cumbersome, but if one drive is lost, it doesn't depend on the other drive to boot.
Losing your original C drive with the Windows boot manager would mean that both
Windows installs would become non operable. The disadvantage till you get used to
it or name your drive volumes so that you know which is which, is that the booting
drive (as set in the BIOS) becomes C, and the other drive becomes D so you don't
want to make changes to system files on either drive when it is not actively running
it's install of Windows.
The article Bob mentioned doesn't take in to account the current way your installs
were enumerated so won't help you in this situation. It assumes that only one drive
was installed as C and the other was installed as D, E, F etc originally. In that
case, you can use the boot.ini to point to a second install as long as the drive
letter that is assigned at boot time is correct for that particular install of Windows.
If it isn't, then you run a repair install to change the drive letter and repair
the registery for that copy of Windows as it was looking for at boot time. Sounds
complicated, but it really isn't once you learn what the boot.ini does and what it
can not do in a situation such as this.
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 |  | re: Dual-boot Windows XP w/ Win XP on same PC (C K: Sat, Jul 4, 2009, 8:33 am) |
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