multi versions of windows

RoyalMarine

hey is there much of a problem running 2 hard drives, with 2 different vesions of win installed on them?
not sure why its happened :P
but it has... any reason why its gonna be a prob?
cheers.

Rollo Tamasi

its no problem at all. I run XP and 2000 on two different hard drives.
Are you currently having a problem. your post is a bit vague.

Capt'n Midnight

Licensing woud be messy though..

RoyalMarine

no, not having a prob at all...
seems to be working fine lads. just wondering is there many probs that i can run into as ive not done it before...
cheers

Inspector Gadget

As far as I know (the only dual-boot systems I deal with are Windows/Linux systems, mind you) The only real difference is that the bootloader (assuming you're using the Windows one, as opposed to the myriad of other possibilities out there) will have an extra line in \BOOT.INI on the primary master disk over what's typically installed by Windows (each line denotes an OS instance it thinks it knows how to boot); - make a backup to a safe place just in case you need to reinstall either system as this file will get overwritten. I know it's tiny, and plain text and all, but it's handier to have a copy lying about than guessing disk parameters.

Gadget

Capt'n Midnight

bootpart is a great util for fixing the boot.ini
also make a boot disk by formattting a floppy in the newest OS and copying boot.int ntldr and ntdetect.com to it.
if you boot from the second drive and you remove the first one the boot.ini would need a line to reflect this.

DjTaz

Guys , you might be able to help me here -

I installed red hat onto a PC that had XP on it already - on a reboot i got the ntldr is missing problem.

Now i fixed this by booting with the win xp cd - going to rescue and typing in

FIXBOOT, answer Yes
CD \
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -S NTDETEC.COM
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
COPY E:\I386\NTLDR C:\
COPY E:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
Exit

and then it booted fine .... but if i power off , i get the ntldr missing again , and i have to go thru that process again ... can anyone tell me how i can repair this so i dont have to do that each time ?

Thanks in advance

DjTaz

anyone ?

Inspector Gadget

(Anyone? I count as anyone! Cool! )

Is it safe for me to assume from this that you're using the Windows bootloader?

Redhat? Do you mean a recent Fedora Release, or did you either pay for RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux) or dig out some pretty old disks? Last (free) Redhat Release was 9, there have been four Fedora Core's (Fedora superseded Redhat's free OS releases) since...

Just in case, you should do a *full* virus scan on your Windows install, and scan it for Spyware/Adware/Malware - all that sort of thing. It probably wouldn't hurt to do an integrity check on your disk. Find whatever disk checker suits your HDD (Seatools, DFT, Powermax, etc.) and to a full check in case (by some misfortune) your bootsector's damaged.

Gadget

DjTaz

Im actually using Grub to boot - it gives the option of 2 linux boots or DOS boot - and works fine if i do the above first.

once i select either Dos or Linux from that menu , it all boots fine - if i reboot - i get the grub menu again - no problems ... if i turn the PC off and start again . i get NTLDR IS MISSING

Ive scanned for viruses and nothing ... i think i just need to change the boot.ini file to point to the Grub , but i really dont know how to do that.

Thanks for the reply Gadget