Dual boot with RAID and XP-64

[Shooks]

I cant get this damn thing to work! I have been using a RAID 0 stripe (SATA) with XP-PRO on it for quite some time. I recently decided to install XP-64 on the master IDE drive in my computer. The boot order is Stripe then MasterIDE, but in either case when I switch the order of these, it goes straight into the OS on that drive, does not detect the other.
The only way I can get it to boot into XP-64 without changing the bootorder in the BIOS is kind of strange. If I leave the SetupCD of XP-64 in the CD drive it says the usual press any key to boot from CD, now if I just wait and it passes this then for some reason it boots to XP-64. If the CD is not in the drive, then it boots to XP-pro on my SATA RAID stripe. This is very confusing and I dont get why one OS cant detect the other. There was a boot.ini file on both drives but the physical locations were identical, which I also dont get... for example the two were
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

I need some serious help, I will try anything at this point to get it to dual boot without messing with the BIOS or having to have the CD in the drive.

 

[nweaver]

probably need to change the boot.ini. Not sure to what (unless you install grub ). I think multi(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) for XP (I kinda depends on how drives are detected).

Flame me if I'm wrong....
not sure what multi(0) means
disk(0) is the disk number (and remember your raid is one logical disk)
partition is the boot partition for that drive, I thought these all counted from 0, but this may have a 1 base.



For all you "I tried linux 20 minutes and it sucked" folks, this is one case where a liveCD and vi make linux ultimately easier and quicker then windows. I have fixed a hosed bootloader that I misconfigured in just a minute or 2. Misconfigure your boot loader in windows and you will have some finagling to do.

 

[Shooks]

is there any way to find out what these values should be though, i mean through like device manager, i looked but didnt see naything like these numbers.

 

[nweaver]

google for XP Bootloader, check the ms knowledge base.

 

[TGS]

Edit Bootloader

Purpose

It seems like you have a problem with the new install of XP-64. It should have installed the bootloader to the IDE drive vice the Raid array. Make your XP-64 the boot device, and make the changes to the XP-64s boot.ini.

Add an additional line to the boot.ini as such:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

That should let XP-64s bootloader know that there is a windows os installed on the second hard drive( SATA array). When you do this make sure the

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

line is set as default with at least a 10 second timer so you can switch to XP32 if the need arises.


This is the trouble of installing an OS on a new physical volume, as the bootloader information is not shared. Which typically people dual-boot off the same physical disk, but just create a new partition to install the OS to. Windows will see the pre-existing install and edit the boot.ini accordingly.