Simple dual boot question...

[rrypma]

Hi, I just installed XP Pro onto a new SATA drive after partitioning with XP setup. I moved my previous XP drive (XP still on it along with all data) to the master secondary IDE.

Now, when I reboot my computer, the previous XP drive (C) boots instead of the newly installed XP on the new drive. And, I notice that the new partitions on the new disk are E:, F:, and G:.

How do I make the new install boot, and secondly, is there a way to choose which one boots in case I want to boot to the old disk? Thanks for any replies...

 

[Hyperblaze]

What's your boot sequence in the BIOS?

 

[rmrf]

remove all other ide drives besides the cdrom when you are installing on the sata drive. windows has a bug that causes it to do weird things when installing on a sata drive.

 

[rrypma]

Right now I have CD, followed by the "hard drive".

 

[rrypma]

So, you would suggest just re-installing XP after removing the previous drive?

There's no way to make the E: drive the 'system' drive?

 

[rmrf]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

 

[rrypma]

Originally posted by: rmrf
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

Thanks for the link...I saw that a bit earlier. The first sentence is a warning:

"Warning Do not use the procedure that is described in this article to change a drive on a computer where the drive letter has not changed."

My drive letters haven't changed, but I would just as soon boot from my new disk, and not the old one. I'm afraid if I just reinstall XP after removing the old drive, and then, reconnect it after the install, it will again become the system drive (C) and I'll be back where I started.

 

[lumbus]

First of all, straighten out your BIOS settings so that you are booting off the right drive. You should be able to specify a specifc hard drive. Assuming you did a full install to the new drive, you should be able to start up your new copy of Windows. Once you do that, you'll see how your partitions have been "numbered" on your NEW Windows installation, which is what matters, right?

If they are numbered incorrectly, the advice above about disconnecting the other drives while reinstalling Windows is a good idea.

I recently did something similar myself (added a new SATA to be the system drive). Rather than reinstalling Windows, I just cloned my old system drive onto the new drive, using Norton Ghost 2003. Saves a lot of trouble with reinstalling programs etc, unless you need to reinstall Windows anyway for other reasons. Windows will likely get confused and rename your system drive when you do this, but you can fix that with the Microsoft article linked to above.

Are you sure you want to make three partitions on your new drive? The more contigious space the better, IMHO.

 

[rrypma]

Ah, I didn't know BIOS is updated in terms of which hard drive I could boot from. If the drives are labeled correctly, then I'll stick with that.

I wanted to partition to keep the OS on the fastest partition, but also to play around with MCE as well as a future MS OS. I followed "radified's partition scheme"....

One last question....When partitioning a drive with XP setup, How do I inform it that I'd like a partition to be a primary one? I can't boot from the extended partition. It just assumed that all others were logicals in the extended partition. If there's no way around this, and short of FDISK (I have no floppy drive), can I simply delete those partitions and create new primary partitions in XP?

 

[rrypma]

Yes, I didn't know I could select which HD in the BIOS to boot from. Now, the C drive is the new XP install on the new disk. So, that's good.

Anyone know if I need the other partitions to be primary ones to install another OS (MCE)? If so, why doesn't XP setup give you the option to create more than 1 primary partition? If not, why do people have more than one primary partition on the disk?