Advice sought on Dual/Triple Boot Win XP from PATA and SATA drives

You can change all the partition letters in Disk Management Pete, except of course the Boot and System partitions, which can’t be changed. Out of curiosity did you make a small partition on the IDE drive for the ntloader and what letters did you end up with for it and XP?

Realised I never answered your question last night, so just for future reference:

If the drive had never had a bootable Windows on it before then yes fixmbr would have been necessary. The bootcfg command however would not have helped, it only updates the boot.ini file. There was no boot.ini file in the XP install on the SATA drive and even if bootcfg had created a new and correct boot.ini (don’t know if it would) it would not have helped as there was also no ntloader there to use it. As far as I know there is no command from the recovery console that will write a new ntloader. Only a repair install or manually placing the ntloader files in the root of XP will do the job.

Sparrow…..the fixboot command does not touch the boot.ini file. It writes a new PBR (Partition Boot Record) to the first sector of the WinNT partition. I’m pretty sure even when the ntloader is placed on another partition, the install of WinNT will still by default write a correct and usable PBR, even though it is not going to be used.

I’m not an expert at using the ntloader as the bootmanager in a multiboot machine, so some details I can’t be sure of. The reason I know so much about it is a case of ‘Know Thine Enemy’. It can’t do what I want and so I had to learn how it worked to control it.

 

McTavish,

Experimenting, I found that if you have a PATA connected, The installation program insists on putting the boot files there, whether there's an OS on it or not. For example, when I put the first OS (W2K, as it happens, but suspect XP to be the same) on the first SATA, I left the PATA connected, but not partitioned and so not formatted, and the installation program insisted I make a partition on it and format it so it could put the loader and .ini files on it, even though I was installing to another (SATA) drive! Wasn't my idea at all.

You are undoubtedly correct about "fixboot command does not touch the boot.ini file "; I probably should have said bootcfg if my memory serves. I don't use recovery console enough to remember everything, but the principal remains. I just check what the commands do while using it. Incidentally, it's easier to delete boot.ini and remake it, since all the RC does is add lines, and that can get ridiculous.

 

PeteC, please take a look at the PATA to see if the boot files are on its first partition.

 

Your bios Sparrow will be set for the IDE hard drive to be the boot drive. When you remove the IDE drives the bios and so the XP install will default to the first present SATA drive and make it the boot drive, hence the install will put the ntloader on that SATA drive. You should be able to change the order in the bios so the SATA is the boot drive, so that you do not need to disconnect the IDE drives to get the ntloader to behave. The setting for SATA hard drives in the bios is typically the SCSI option.

If you have two SATA drives as you have Pete, then there may not be an option in the bios to make the second SATA drive the boot drive. There is usually only one option for SCSI in the bios and it will make the drive on the first SATA socket the boot drive.

 

The for sure way to tell Pete if the ntloader is on another partition or drive is to look in Disk Management. The Windows you are booted into will show the word (System) in the Status column. If there is no partition tagged with (Boot) then it means the ntloader is on the partition you are booted into.

You realise that you can’t change the boot order now in your bios without loosing the ability to boot you new XP. If you want XP back on you PATA drives you will either have to install them so they work through the new XP’s ntloader. Or install them with the bios order changed so they get their own ntloaders. You will then have to use the bios as your means of selecting which OS to boot, (only one OS per hard drive) or use a third party bootmanager. Remember if you use the ntloader you can’t get all the installs to see themselves as the C: drive.

You could install separately to a PATA drive and then add a line to its boot.ini file for the SATA XP. However I’m never tried this myself and so not sure if there would be any conflict with the ntloader and two OSes which see themselves as the same drive letter.

Glad so see some motherboards have the option to make either of the SATA drives the boot drive. I’ve not yet come across that myself, but I am a little out of data at the moment with my hardware. Two years since I built my last machine.

 

Just for fun, ordered a KVM switch so can now run the workhorse and the new experimental box side by side. It just arrived. Below is my diskmgr view, and while the disks weren't swapped on the MoBo, maybe they should have been. Again, altho I made several permutations of disks, I don't have a problem with this setup and think it's interesting, so left it. The BIOS didn't ask or tell me which disk to boot; It was picked by the W2K installer; what I chose was the partition on which to install. Didn't test the XP installer; just assumed it might do the same.

Linux is on the unlabeled 6.43GB partition.

I didn't leave the 40GB PATA installed because I use it to work on other PCs for backup mostly.

Haven't connected the boxes together yet, so am sending thes from the XP64(trial) box.

 

sorry; view of disk management window in computer management in administrative tools.

 

Never seen a working setup like that before Sparrow. How did you get things configured that way? Windows could not natively do that.

You have the boot partition a logical (the one with the ntloader). You must have either cloned XP to the logical or manually added the ntloader after the install. You must have then added a line to the boot.ini file for the first partition on the 40gig - the "system" partition in your screenshot. You must also have an other bootmanager (Grub I assume) to boot the ntloader in the first place?

 

PeteC, we see the images. Don't know how to help you.

It DID! The boot partition c:\ is a primary on SATA0. W2K is in a primary on SATA1 and XP64 is in an extended. I've seen that before. However, I don't understand "logical "; I consider all partitions logical in a sense. All the work was done by the two istllation CDs. Nothing was cloned to produce the result; I did ghost the results of the installation, though.

boot.ini follows:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS= "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT= "Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

No slight-of-hand involved.

I reserved the partition for Linux, but haven't got around to installing it. So at present neither is Grub installed. In an earlier incarnation I did install Linux and grub and it does not effect the windows installation either way; it's just a boot loader that mindlessly points to ntldr, which is next in line in the boot sequence when linux is bypassed.

 

Well I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on Sparrow but can you just confirm a few things for me. When you say you Ghosted an installation, was it that you used Ghost to put XP64 on to the partition it is currently on?

Did you remove the Linux bootloader from the system or did it just disappear by itself, or do you still see it at bootup?

Which hard drive is the first boot hard drive in your bios.

Where is that boot.ini file located, which OS is it inside?

Is your Win2000 install fully bootable?

 

While I’m not yet certain how you achieved your setup I can tell you that you have a crossed XP boot. The boot process is starting in your XP64 install and then moving to the install called Bootstuff. Which means you are actually running a hybrid of the two OSes. "“ which is mostly the Bootstuff OS (maybe only a few percent XP64)

Have you noticed any strange things in the Bootstuff OS? (Which I assume is XP Home or Pro) Any programs listed in Add/Remove Programs that you only installed in XP64?

 

No. Just made a backup image of the partition of the fresh install.

The linux partition on SATA0 is a primary partition and has no OS installed. Repeat, there is no OS on SATA0 at present. As I recall, I intalled the file system only. So NO grub.

Don't know. The BIOS lists a SATA but doesn't indicate its size and the 40 and 80GB drives have the same name in the MoBo BIOS, with no mention of their size. Thay are both Western digital. The separate RAID bios distinguishes them and seems to automatically choose SATA0, but if I hit tab at a message in the boot sequence (after POST and before the OS starts to load) I can choose to boot anything I want that's attached to the computer, even the flash drive. Bur I just let it boot aotomatically.

The only boot.ini is on c:\ as shown above in the picture of the root of SATA0 partition 0, which contains NO OS.

Yes, it is.

I would say that I have a perfectly normal dual boot process, which starts on the c: drive by running the ntldr which reads the boot.ini and performs as expected according to my choice if any. It does this by loading and passing control to whichever kernel I choose or to the default. I see nothing unusual about that. It's what I've seen for years dual booting win98 and XP, 98 being on c:\ and XP on d:\, but the boot.ini and ntldr etc. are on c: . As I mentioned, the W2K installation required (insisted on) this arrangement when I elected to install on d: and XP simply used what was there, upgrading it with more recent files. Proved that by reinstalling W2K after XP was in place, and found that XP would no longer boot so had to replace the files on c: with those from XP, I think by a reinstall after trying to use rc on the XP CD.

Didn't realize notes were indicated; sorry.
I think it reveals a very useful property of the boot process, as mentioned above. One can make a small partition on the "boot drive" and then use the rest of the drives any way one likes.

 

Bugger…..I’ve got the piggin System and Boot partitions mixed up again. Sorry Sparrow, I’m always doing that. I said earlier it is counter intuitive and against convention and it often confuses me. I thought I had it down pat, but obviously it caught me again. The System partition is the one with the ntloader and the Boot partition is the one with the OS, so your setup is perfectly normal, as of course you said. Sorry again. In my defence on my machines it is slightly different.

Natively with NT when the System and Boot partition is the same partition it will be called the System partition "“ and there will be no Boot partition. All of my NT’s have the System and Boot as the same partition, but most of my installs are labelled as the Boot partition and I have no System partition.

The reason is I run most of my NT’s directly from logical partitions with each one having its own ntloader included on the logical partition. WinNT will not natively permit the ntloader on a logical partition, so my setup was not designed for and seems to have the effect of turning the System/Boot thing back to front.

I’m off to stand in the corner now and bang my head against the wall.

 

This point took me by surprise, too. That's why I mentioned it. It accidentally separated the boot process from the OS quite clearly. It also showed that the ntldr of W2K is smaller and obviously less powerful than that of XP. Serendipity is still the mother of knowledge.

 

After that blunder I’m going to be more careful of what I say, but I can confidently say that you are correct that the 2K and XP ntloaders are different. The 2K one can’t boot XP, so if you install 2K after XP, the ntloader in XP will be replaced with the 2K one, which results in a non-booting XP. This is the main reason for Microsoft’s recommendation of installing the older OSes first. It’s easily fixed however by replacing the two ntloader files "“ ntldr and ntdetect "“ with the XP version of these files. These files are not computer specific so even if you did not back them up before you installed 2K, all you have to do is get them from any source.

If you install Win9x after 2K/XP it’s a whole different ball game however to configure the ntloader as the bootmanager.

 

Right! I, too, have my share of misstatements (blunders) as PeteC can testify. Think that makes for more interesting discussions than just the dry facts.