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Dual booting Windows XP problem

  • 08-11-2005 3:10pm
    #1
    IceHawk
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 374 ✭✭


    I just built a new PC with a brand new hard drive and Windows XP x64 installed fine, everything was working fine until I decided to mount my old hard drive, with Windows XP home, alongside the new one to allow dual boot, because Windows x64 isn't supported by a lot of programs. I installed the hard drive fine, and from My Computer I can see all the files and access them. I can't boot the computer off the old hard drive, though. I've modified boot.ini to give me the option at startup which version to load, but selecting 32 bit windows causes an error screen to display, saying there is a file missing. :confused:

    The same thing happens if I change the boot devices priority in the BIOS. The old HDD was working perfectly right up until I took it out of my old computer.

    Help!


Comments

  • #2
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,567 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    The problem is that XP home expects to be on C: on the first drive, even if you change the boot.ini entries to point at C: windows can still get confused, esp if the swapfile drive letter goes missing. ( C: - depends on which windows boot AND the volume label on the drive AND probably if either disk is dynamic AND possibly the colour of the carpet in the building next door )

    Once you sort out that you still have the problem that XP doesn't like being moved as that typically breaks your license agreement, microsoft don't go overboard to make it easy and it usually blue screens unless you have run sysprep or some such.

    If you are missing NToSKernl then it's just barely starting to boot.

    [Boot Loader]
    Timeout=5
    Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP64"
    multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP home"


  • #3
    Orion
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,807 ✭✭✭✭Orion


    sysprep is just for removing all hardware information from the install so that you can take a disk image to apply to any hardware. That's not the problem in this case. However your edits to the boot.ini are correct - but the XP64 should be the primary. It could still have problems as both versions of windows were installed on the C drives and will be looking for them after loading.

    One option is to install XP Home on the XP64 disk - it'll automatically set up a dual boot. You'll probably need to do a repair on the XP64 boot though as Home will replace the kernel files.

    Best option imo is to get Boot Magic or some other boot manager and use that to set up different boot partitions.


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