Cant dual boot now :(

D.Roberts

D.Roberts

D.Roberts

Soldato
Joined
3 Feb 2006
Posts
3,322
Location
not sure
Hi all got a little problem

I have two sata HD drives in me PC Basically I have just purchased a new GPU (from OCUK cheers for fast delivery btw) and before I was dual booting XP as one HD was for gaming other was for work.

Now what I did was replace one HD with a bigger one and formatted that and installed me new GPU.

After all driver installs I was like ummmm why am I not getting the option to choose the other HD at boot up I looked in the hard drive I have just instaled and it only shows that one OS in the

Advanced
Start up and recovery
Default operating system.

So i went into my bios and selected me other hard drive to boot from so upon a save of bios and a restart I get a

Boot disk failure :(.

I will add btw that if I start XP from the freshly formatted HD I can still access the other hard drive but just don't get the option at boot to choose what HD to load from unlike before?.

thanks for the help and sorry about me spelling and grammar (see sig :P)
 
Find boot.ini on a windows hard disk, save a copy as oldboot.ini. Modify boot.ini with another line to reflect the other windows partition. Use Notepad.exe to modify and save.

This is a sample of the Boot.ini file with a previous installation of Windows XP on a separate disk.


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

# The "timeout" variable specifies how long Windows waits before choosing the default operating system.
# The "default" variable specifies the default operating system.
# The term "scsi(0)" means that the primary controller (that is frequently the only controller) is responsible for the device. If there are two SCSI controllers, and the disk is associated with the second controller, the controller is named "scsi(1)".

If the system uses IDE, enhanced IDE (EIDE), or Enhanced Small Device Interface (ESDI) drives, or if the system uses a SCSI adapter that does not have a built-in BIOS, replace "scsi" with "multi".
# The term "disk(0)" refers to the SCSI logical unit (LUN) to use. This may be a separate disk, but most SCSI setups have only one LUN for each SCSI ID.
# The term "rdisk(0)" refers to physical disk 1.
# The term "partition(1)" is the partition on the first drive in the computer. If there are two partitions, partition C is partition(1) and partition D is partition(2).
# A multi-boot parameter calls for checking the Winnt folder to start from a specified SCSI controller's disk and partition.
\WINDOWS is the windows folder name on the disk, items in quotes is the name, can be anything "Freds windoze" etc.


Save boot.ini

restart computer.

only copy the last line leave all others unchanged initially so that you know one system will boot. You have the original file saved as oldboot (think of the wife :) ).

The boot disk in bios is one with boot.ini and the boot folder on it.

andy
 
Last edited:
Hi there blimey thanks for the reply I will give that a go cheers I will have a play with me new GPU first though :P in the game I actually got it for...ARMA2 of course :).

the hard drive I just fitted replaced the very first HD that was in my pc so that had the boot.ini file in it for the old HD that's in my pc.

But why when I formatted this new HD did it not say oh he has XP on another disk here lets create a boot.ini for that on this disk even though when I was formatting it did see it in the list of HD`s and OS`s all ready installed?.

thanks
 
D.Roberts said:
Hi there blimey thanks for the reply I will give that a go cheers I will have a play with me new GPU first though :P in the game I actually got it for...ARMA2 of course :).

the hard drive I just fitted replaced the very first HD that was in my pc so that had the boot.ini file in it for the old HD that's in my pc.

But why when I formatted this new HD did it not say oh he has XP on another disk here lets create a boot.ini for that on this disk even though when I was formatting it did see it in the list of HD`s and OS`s all ready installed?.

thanks
Click to expand...

sorry cant answer that, may be version or something. Ignore spaces in my example, it is pasted in and I cant seem to get rid of them for example WINDOW S, just copy what you see in your boot ini and change the rdisk value.

cheers, andy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom