Dual Boot Headwreck.

Gadgetman496

I'm at a total loss here as to why this is happening (or not happening)

I have a Vostro 400 & I installed two brand new 500GB HDD's.

The drives are not set to Raid so are two totally separate raw drives.

I booted up off the Windows XP Pro disc & installed XP on a partition on one of the drives, done all the updates & installed all my Apps.

I then rebooted from the Vista Ultimate CD & installed Vista on a partition on the second raw drive & it too installed fine.

Now when I restart the machine it boots straight into XP (No screen option to Dual Boot).

At this stage I'm even confusing myself & starting to question if you can boot from two OS's on two different independent drives or does it have to be two OS's on separate partitions but on the same drive.

Straighten my head out here please!

Why is it not Dual Booting?



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bbbbb

Are you using a boot loader?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting

Ginger

Since Vistas bootloader will take priority now, you should boot into Vista and change the boot options there...

Gadgetman496

Ginger wrote: »

Since Vistas bootloader will take priority now, you should boot into Vista and change the boot options there...

No, when I boot now (with one OS on each drive) it boots straight into XP it neither gives me the boot screen options or boots into Vista.

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Ginger

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

This might help

Gadgetman496

Ginger wrote: »

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

This might help

Does that install & run under XP or is it Vista only?

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Ginger

Being honest I doubt it and I am thinking you might have to do a vista repair.. to repair the bootloader..

Did you install XP followed by Vista and then do nothing else? (That is not a bad thing, just wondering what the events were)

See from the OP you did...

kudzRS

gadgetman496 wrote: »

I'm at a total loss here as to why this is happening (or not happening)

I have a Vostro 400 & I installed two brand new 500GB HDD's.

The drives are not set to Raid so are two totally separate raw drives.

I booted up off the Windows XP Pro disc & installed XP on a partition on one of the drives, done all the updates & installed all my Apps.

I then rebooted from the Vista Ultimate CD & installed Vista on a partition on the second raw drive & it too installed fine.

Now when I restart the machine it boots straight into XP (No screen option to Dual Boot).

At this stage I'm even confusing myself & starting to question if you can boot from two OS's on two different independent drives or does it have to be two OS's on separate partitions but on the same drive.

Straighten my head out here please!

Why is it not Dual Booting?



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basically your computer is set to boot off the primary partition (c:) as default, you will need to install the other os on the same drive to get the dual boot screen

Gadgetman496

Ginger wrote: »

Being honest I doubt it and I am thinking you might have to do a vista repair.. to repair the bootloader..

Did you install XP followed by Vista and then do nothing else? (That is not a bad thing, just wondering what the events were)

Yes, I installed XP followed by Vista. (But on two separate drives) that shouldn't be a problem though should it?

I have done this many times before without issue & even had this particular machine dual booting perfectly for two months.

The problem all stemmed from one of the HDD's starting to click (You know the dreaded clicking sound just before a drive keels over :eek:) anyway Dell decided to replace the two drives as they were receiving too many failed HDD's from a particular batch of Samsungs so they sent me out two new Seagate Spinpoints & that's why I'm reinstalling both OS's.

Ginger

kudzRS wrote: »

basically your computer is set to boot off the primary partition (c:) as default, you will need to install the other os on the same drive to get the dual boot screen

Not true

I had my machine dual booting off 2 physical disks .. (i have 8)

Ginger

Try a repair of windows vista from the dvd, it might just fix the bootloader for you..

I am stumped as to why it didnt have the bootloader show up unless the delay is 0 seconds or something .. which is possible!!

And can you try 1 thing for the laugh.. remove the XP disk and set your Vista disk as the only bootable disk.. just to see what happens

Gadgetman496

Ginger wrote: »

Try a repair of windows vista from the dvd, it might just fix the bootloader for you..

I am stumped as to why it didnt have the bootloader show up unless the delay is 0 seconds or something .. which is possible!!

And can you try 1 thing for the laugh.. remove the XP disk and set your Vista disk as the only bootable disk.. just to see what happens

I have Vista wiped now but I can tell you this. Before I wiped it I could boot into either OS once I disconnected the other drive (ie. disconnect the Vista drive & it would boot to XP. Disconnect the XP drive & it booted into Vista) but for sure, if both drives were connected it would only boot into XP no options given.

It was as if they were being seen as totally independent of each other, I just don't understand WTF is going on to be honest.

I even reformatted the Vista drive & installed Vista a second time just out of pure frustration really, in the vain hope that some little glitch may have occurred on the first install, but no, it did exactly the same the second time. (Don't you just love technology )

I might just try Vista one more time on a separate partition on the same drive as XP to see if it will make a difference? Vista installs really fast anyway.

Only for the weather is so good I think the high stool would be calling

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Ginger

I thinks I have it...

Next time you do it, start the Vista install from inside Windows XP.. and tell it you want to do advanced and fresh install.. Then install onto the new disk

That will ensure that the bootloader will get onto the XP partition..

I think what happened was that when you booted from DVD it didnt even look at the other disk as it didnt need to..

Make sense?

Gadgetman496

Just out of curiousity guys,

When you install HDD's they get sequenced starting with Drive:0 then Drive:1

Initially when I installed XP I had not connect the second drive (I connected it after XP was installed).

When I physically connected the second drive & booted from the VISTA DVD it assigned the drive to 0 (Zero) & the drive with XP became drive #1

Could that have had any bearing on this sorry sad episode?


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Ginger

Possibly.. drive numbering could have got screwed and primary partitions knocked about

Villain

You carried out two seperate installs on two drives each with a seperate boot sector, to alternate bewteen OS's you would need to do it via the bios options i.e. boot sequence.

If you want to dual boot you will need to install the one OS with both drives present then install the other OS within the first one, although I'm still not certain that would work.

Your boot.ini should look like:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Vista Ultimate" /fastdetect

Ginger

Thats the theory except Vista doesnt use the boot.ini stuff anymore.. its uses a different system called BCD..

Gadgetman496

Ginger wrote: »

I thinks I have it...

Next time you do it, start the Vista install from inside Windows XP.. and tell it you want to do advanced and fresh install.. Then install onto the new disk

That will ensure that the bootloader will get onto the XP partition..

I think what happened was that when you booted from DVD it didnt even look at the other disk as it didnt need to..

Make sense?

Ginger, do you mean insert the DVD & run the install process from while logged onto XP as opposed to booting from the DVD?

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Ginger

Yup.....

Just make sure to do the advanced or fresh install option rather than upgrade

Gadgetman496

I just thought I'd let you all know how this panned out.

After trying every way I could possibly think of I could not get the Dual Boot to work on to separate drives.

I eventually formatted one of the drives & created two partitions on it, installed both OS's & straight away I had the Dual Boot screen at startup.

Everything is humming nicely now .

Looks like kudzRS & Villain's theory was right.......

Thanks to all for the input.



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doncarlos

Install this http://www.vistabootpro.org/ should sort your problems out

MunsterCycling

Nice but the thread is over a year old so I think they might have solved this one

doncarlos

Not sure how that happened. Must have clicked one of the links on the bottom of the page without looking at the date. Ah well at least they got it sorted!

Gadgetman496

doncarlos wrote: »

Not sure how that happened. Must have clicked one of the links on the bottom of the page without looking at the date. Ah well at least they got it sorted!

Thanks for your input all the same

Every little helps.

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daftdave

gadgetman496 wrote: »

Thanks for your input all the same

Every little helps.

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ha ha , i read the whole thread and didnt even cop it was a yr old !

doh.