Os Question

E

eulB

New Member
I have two 300 gb SATA hard drives. One has a fresh install of vista and the other has xp. In order to boot in to one i have to unplug the other. Is there any way to get my pc to ask what HD to boot from?
 
Was each version of Windows installed separately or while the other was plugged in? If you installed Vista with the drive unplugged XP simply wasn't included in the new type of bootmgr(boot manager BCD) file. The option to boot a previous version of Windows won't be seen. See if you notice the F8 boot menu option at post time next to the DEL key to enter the bios setup.

Prior to Windows first starting to load with that F8 menu being available some boards offer another boot menu for choosing the drive as well as type of drive to boot. Otherwise the boot device order is cnanged in the bios to seek out the XP drive instead of the Vista drive first.
 
I have not tried this in vista, but if you can boot into recovery console mode you can try running the bootcfg /rebuild command and add two seperate installations, and that should rebuild the boot.ini file so that you can dual boot OSes.
 
The boot.ini and bootmgr files are in two different worlds there. When installing the newer version of Windows the installer adds a record of the older version at that time. Simply using a BCD edit tool to add an XP installation as a boot option won't work. The Vista installer creates a new boot folder on the XP drive as well as a few other changes.

 
I just looked it up via google, and the technet document from MS says run bcdedit.exe to add installations.

They changed the boot.ini file as in it no longer exists. I am waiting until I build my new computer before I dive into vista....so some things I am not too keen on yet.
 
I could not get Vista to install unless the other HD was unplugged the install would freeze. I figured out that i can hit F11 for boot menu and then select the hard drive to boot into.

Im quite confused with the above post due to the board members higher level of computer knowledge; Can you restate the solution for an idiot?
 
well from what I can gather and i can't test this because my only vista machine is at work is that you can simply go to start > run and type in bcdedit.exe or if that file is loaded or present during the installation process and you can drop to a command prompt you should be able to run it from there.

Another option would be to load a boot loader from a third party, but lets not go there yet.

As for the locking up, it probably didn't actually lock the installer was probably scanning your HD and your previous OS for upgrade options. The vista installer is not that fast, in fact I would go ahead and call it slow.
 
I don't think anything besides installing XP Pro on a 500gb sata is slow except going through all of the new security prompts seen with the user account control option checked off in seeing it take..... 4... ev rrrrrr to get one program installed. XP Pro took a full day there. Vista? I still have a few things to get running yet besides needing newer versions of the same programs.
 
uhh..am i missing something here?? I hooked up 2 hard drives with xp and vista once...I used it like that for about 2 weeks..all i did was press one of the F buttons at the top of the keyboard...i forget which and my bios would ask which drive i should boot from....i could even access the other drive while i was booted off the other..:confused:

btw, i did this on an ASUS p4p800 se...maybe it's just my mobo
 
That would be the F8 key seen right next to the "press delete to enter setup" option when first seeing the post screen just as the drives are being detected, tested, and listed there. When you press that the drives are shown in different catagories with the floppy shown at the top. You then see the hard drives installed and optical drives(cd/dvd) at the bottom. There you simply scroll down to the drive you want to boot from according to the model number seen.

In the bios itself you can assign either one as the first in the order. Upon leaving the bios you press the F10 or choose the exit and save option to see that drive assigned as the default boot device. You first go into the boot order or boot device section and scroll down to "hard drives" there and press the enter key to enter that menu. You then use the + or - key on the numpad to change the order of the drive selected.
 
What is the point of running two os's on two different hard drives? why dont you just pick one? Sorry if i sound ignorant.
 
There are a large number of reasons for multi OSing a system. Gee? Why can't I run this 98 program on XP? How come this won't work on Vista? What is Linux? Do you have hundreds of dollars invested in programs and games to find out that they won't run on a newer version of the current operating system while wanting the newer version for new features? How about simply getting familiar with a newer version since you service systems with both hardware and software problems? These are a few right there.
 
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