Dual booting XP Pro and XP Home

J

js1091

New Member
ok so i have one hard drive with XP Pro already on it, and one with XP Home already on it. When my computer boots up it always boots the XP Pro one even if i tell the bios to check the XP Home hard drive for 1st boot priority. If i disconnect the XP Pro hard drive, it does boot the XP home. So,

what i want to know is how can i select on startup which one i wish to load?

thanks.

-Jeff
 
When you set the Home version drive as the first boot device in the bios you would have to disable any other drives. The question here is do you have a boot menu when pressing the F8 key at post time? That will list all ide drives including the floppy drive if you have that feature. Otherwise the F8 Windows menu will be the choice of startups like safe mode, safe mode command prompt only, last know configuration that worked, etc..

The bios will always default to the primary drive on a system. If you had installed one version to the secondary drive while the primary was plugged in the MBR(master boot record) and boot.ini file would have been modified automatically to give the option of which Windows installation to load when first starting the system.

One article that outlines how to edit the boot.ini file for dual OSing a system is seen at http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm Note that for dual booting the second drive instead of second partition seen as default there with "C:\ = "Microsoft Windows Me " at the end you would enter "D:\=Microsoft Windows XP Home" for the "D" if assigned that drive letter.
 
PC eye said:
When you set the Home version drive as the first boot device in the bios you would have to disable any other drives. The question here is do you have a boot menu when pressing the F8 key at post time? That will list all ide drives including the floppy drive if you have that feature. Otherwise the F8 Windows menu will be the choice of startups like safe mode, safe mode command prompt only, last know configuration that worked, etc..

The bios will always default to the primary drive on a system. If you had installed one version to the secondary drive while the primary was plugged in the MBR(master boot record) and boot.ini file would have been modified automatically to give the option of which Windows installation to load when first starting the system.

One article that outlines how to edit the boot.ini file for dual OSing a system is seen at http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm Note that for dual booting the second drive instead of second partition seen as default there with "C:\ = "Microsoft Windows Me " at the end you would enter "D:\=Microsoft Windows XP Home" for the "D" if assigned that drive letter.
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couldnt have said it better myself
 
Well that's from dual booting Windows and Linux as well over several years. When originally trying out 98SE 95 was used to load the installer. 98 was installed to a separate directory named Window98. When it loaded the option to boot 95 was seen at startup time. All that on a 1.4gb WD hard drive. :D
 
why would you want to dual-boot home and pro? there pretty much the same thing.(besides pro starting up faster.)
 
jamesb21222 said:
why would you want to dual-boot home and pro? there pretty much the same thing.(besides pro starting up faster.)
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Why would you dual boot ME or 98 with XP? Why would you dual boot Linux with XP? Why would you dual boot any version with anything else? :rolleyes: The actual answer is too easy to figure out. Dual even multiple OSing allows access to more then one operating system for an endless variety of reasons like running different or older applications for one. To get a working familiairity with different OSs is another.
 
jamesb21222 said:
why would you want to dual-boot home and pro? there pretty much the same thing.(besides pro starting up faster.)
Click to expand...

The reason why I would dual-boot is if I was trying out a new OS, playing with the settings but dont want to mess up the primary OS, or if I want one just for testing purposes.
 
I recently ran the latest beta release of Vista on the second drive installed to get some familiarity with it. Presently there are two Linux distros that will be configured to run there. Besides having a second drive for multibooting different OSs it also comes in handy with a large storage partition.
 
MyCattMaxx said:
I used to dual boot. But like stated earlier why dual home and pro? It to me is assnine.
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There are some different configurations especially with drives that can be done with Pro and not available on the Home version. The networking support is also increased with Pro due to having been orientated more towards business applications and office alike. With Pro you have a go between for XP and WIN Server editions.
 
PC eye said:
There are some different configurations especially with drives that can be done with Pro and not available on the Home version. The networking support is also increased with Pro due to having been orientated more towards business applications and office alike. With Pro you have a go between for XP and WIN Server editions.
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I run pro. I just see no use for home when you have pro.
 
Lately I've been Home, Linux, and Vista. Why do I need Pro? It depends on the types of applications you run along with a few other things. For one there's no logon prompt every time you boot the system here. No need for a password recovery tool either.
 
While were on the topic of Home vs Pro (sorta), XP Home can't address multiple CPU cores, as well as more then either 4GB or 8GB of RAM. So if you have a high-end computer, you should get either MCE or Pro.
 
[-0MEGA-];454795 said:
While were on the topic of Home vs Pro (sorta), XP Home can't address multiple CPU cores, as well as more then either 4GB or 8GB of RAM. So if you have a high-end computer, you should get either MCE or Pro.
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That's bull dukey right there. Just ask around and see just how many are running 3800+ X2 cpus with XP home version. :rolleyes:
 
XP home can not handle two processors, it doesn't multi thread. It will recognize that two processors are installed since Home and Pro use the same hardware detection and drivers.

XP Home and XP Pro are practically the same thing with a few exceptions:

XP Pro has these qualities and XP Home Does not:

-Remote desktop

-File encryption, private folders

-Group Policy, Roaming Profiles, can authenticate on AD or other domains, and more micromanageable permissions

It will not run any applications better, they have the same type of Login and welcome screens, they can use pretty much the same exact hardware, and even address the same amount of memory.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx
 
OMEGA was referring to multiple cpu cores not multiple cpus on one board. The AMD64 X2 model cpus along with the FX60 and Socket 939 Opteron cpus are dual cored models.
 
You would most likely see Winserver 2003 or something that used on a multi cpu board. Those are geared for server builds and networks were if one cpu gets loaded up the next one takes over from there. The problems seen on running XP witrh the newer dual core cpus are oftern repaired with an update of the bios version along with a special registry edit. That just happens to be the one used for multiple cpued boards as well. :P
 
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