Dual Boot PC Help (NOT a MAC vs. PC thread)
 

I have my system set with a menu to choose to boot between W2K Adv Server and XP Pro Corp... (dont ask why, long story)

To make a long story short, I had to install my XP Pro to my E: drive, is there a way for me to remove what the PC says is the C: drive (W2K Adv Server) so that I can boot directly to the E: (XP Pro) drive?


keynote:

Yes they are physically two seperate hard drives, not logically

Simply making the slave drive (E: ) a master (via jumpers) and removing the primary drive did not work (duh).

I am guessing that I will have to do something with the bootcfg, or ini or something?

Mah... if you want me to elaborate as to why I had to take the dual boot method of installation for XP Pro, I will...

I used to do dual-boot systems all the time, but that was when I had to use NT for my work stuff and 95 for games. I don't know how much of that stuff has changed because I don't take care of computers and networks liek I used to.

So I'll ive you a sad smiley because I can't help you... :(

And a happy one because it's not my job any more. :)

Right click on my computer, pick properties, then advanced, then settings under startup and recovery. Up top you can choose your default operating system, under that there is a button that says edit. Click that, delete the line for the operating system you do not want, and then save the file. If you are planning on keeping the old operaing system as a backup you may want to copy the original file. Hope this helps.

Thanks, but I have a concern, will this let me get rid of what is now the C: drive (remove it entirely) and still be able to boot?

But it seems like that file is stored on the drive he wants to remove completely.

Yank the c: drive and see what happens. You should be able to boot to your e: drive, if not, then you'll have to figure out what files are missing.

If you read the post, I already did that :) It didnt work.

As long as XP was installed to a different drive or partition than 2k, deleting the entry for 2k will just make it skip checking for that operating system when the computer boots. Since XP will be the only operating system detected it will automatically boot XP. A couple months back I split my computer into three partitions and had XP installed on two of them (long story). Deleting the entry for the one made the other one load automatically, at which time I reformatted the drive with the version I did not want. I might be misunderstanding what you are attempting to do, but as long as XP is fully installed to the E: drive, once you delete the entry for the C: drive you should be able to do whatever you want with that drive.

Thank you much, I will try that when I get home.

Well, that allowed me to boot directly to the E: Drive, BUT... I cannot boot without the original C: drive in place... If I remove it, Im back to where I was when I started this thread.

The boot process is controlled by the file "boot.ini" under your system disk (that is the partition that contains the BOOT files..)

If you have the files "boot.ini" , "ntdetect.com", "ntldr" on your "active"/primary disk, so you can actually get the "boot menu" up, all you have to do is to change some things in the boot.ini file.

the boot.ini file have so called arc-paths to point to the partition that contains the system files (this is called the boot partition....) , logical isn't it :rolleyes:

if your arc-path looks like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

It means this:

multi(0) is the first BIOS controlled drive-controller
disk(0) has no meaning if multi
rdisk(1) means that the drive is the second one (slave)
Partition(2) means....just that, partition number 2 on that drive

remember that multi,disk,rdisk have a startingnumber of 0,
but partition has a starting number of 1.

So, all you have to do is to change the numbers to reflect the "new" position of your partition that holds your system files (windows catalog).

....comprende? :)


/Sonny :cool:

Boot using the XP cd...exit from setup... run "FDISK"...select "Change active partition"...you should know how to handle it from there. Once done, your former C: should be E: and vice versa.

If you want to REMOVE the former C: drive, then you must swap the primary/slave jumpers, or else you will have I/O configuration problems.

Your welcome.

When you installed XP you probably have the same hard drive setup (c: for 2000 and e: for XP). In order to boot the e: drive as c: you would need to copy the boot files over to the e: drive (boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, ....)

This is not guaranteed to work as XP assumes the OS is installed on e: and not c: so it will probably give you errors.

If I was setting up a dual boot like this I would install XP first with the e: drive set up as c:. Then I would swap the drives around to install the other OS.

WOW, this was a long time ago... I ended up installing XP to the 2000 partition, and copying the ntloader, boot.ini ntdetect from C: to E: that worked and I have been up and running with E: as my only drive fro quite some time now.

Thanks to all of those that did help though!!

This shows how far behind I am in some forums. I'm almost caught up in this one though.