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Another Dual Boot, SATA/IDE combo situation..

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Another Dual Boot, SATA/IDE combo situation..

Postby brhandler » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:43 pm

Ok since I'm currently locked out of my desktop I won't be able to provide screenshots..


THEN
For a long time I've used a dual XP boot setup (one for daily use, one for video editing).

2 hard drives, 1 IDE (30gb and slow) and 1 SATA 150 (160gb) split into two partitions.

C: is an IDE Drive used to store media, it is the only drive on channel 1 but it is jumpered to run as a slave.

F: was the Daily Use XP drive

H: was the Editing XP drive (streamlined for speed)

When I first built the system things we handy dandy and I'd simply chose which operating system to load from the XP boot menu. The one day I had a few too many to drink and decided to work on my machine...short story shorter...I tried to plug in a cdrom drive with the machine still fired up and it shut down immediatly.

I turned the machine back on and it wouldn't get past post? so I shut it back down and disconnected the now blown-out CD rom drive. Fired it back up and, I believe due to the change in drive letters, it told me that no NTDIR? was found.

*footnote: I put a new optical drive in place of the blown one to see if that would fix the issue and it did not.

I worked around this by keeping a Norton Ghost install disk in the drive (or XP...whichever was around) and not hitting any key when it asked if I wanted to boot the CD. It was an annoyance to have to keep a CD in the drive and it obviously slowed my boot process.

I tried a few things such as editing the boot.ini and even using a Linux live-environment disk to attempt to reset the MBR.

Here is the weird thing about that setup, the C: drive that didn't contain any operating system stuff, seemed to hold the boot info. I assumed it was either because 1. XP was stupid and wanted the boot info on C: by default regardless of where the operating system lived; 2. My EPOX mobo couldn't have boot information on the SATA drive due to legacy issues (btw, it won't let me flash the bios either...seperate issue); or 3. I guess I don't have a third assumption.

Anyways moving on

NOW

I recently reformated the F partition and installed a clean version of vista ultimate...leaving XP on the H partition. Things were fine, still had to keep a CD in the drive to get to the VISTA boot menu, but it allowed me to boot into Vista or into previous operating systems (listed my editor XP, but also the now erased Xp partition on F)

I was hoping the clean vista install would fix the MBR issue and allow me to boot without having a disk in the drive...to no avail.

So today I decide to copy the contents of the 30 gb IDE drive onto an 80gb IDE drive and swap the two. The 80 had previously lived in an external enclosure...but I needed the extra space. So I copy all the files over and swap the drives in my case. I went to reboot and instead of giving me the option to boot the cdrom is automatically went into the Vista install DVD. If there is no cd in the drive it reads "BOOTMGR is missing". Simply put, I can not boot unless I put the old 30gb drive back in place of the 80.

My assumption was that I didn't copy all the required files off the old 30gb drive so I swaped them again and booted into Vista. This time I copied all the previously hidden system files (boot dir, $windows.bi, boot.ini, etc) and swaped them again. Same problem.

So I tried using bcdedit but it's really confusing to figure out which switch I need, and I also tried using the bootmgr tool on the vista dvd via dos prompt.

As I remember
C (the now 80gb IDE drive) is set as active and primary
F is primary
H is extended


Oh and one last note, though i have a 400w power supply, it only gives me 4 full-sized drive connectors so I can't run both the 30 and 80 at the same time.
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Postby brhandler » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:58 pm

I tried to let the vista disk to an automatic repair and now it boots automatically to the Editor XP version and doesn't even use the vista bootmgr so I can't load vista...
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Postby brhandler » Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:22 pm

NOw that I'm loaded into XP I can give you a FEW screenshots...remember this is how XP decides drive letters.

I've named all the different drives (partitions) to how I refer to them in the first post.

You have the 80gb IDE drive, Daily VISTA, and Editor XP

This is the contents of the 80gb IDE drive...note that the boot files here are the ones copied from the old 30gb drive.
http://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/brhandler/ ... ARE/80.jpg


http://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/brhandler/ ... ootpro.jpg

http://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/brhandler/ ... /cmpmg.jpg
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Postby brhandler » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:23 pm

Ok so I followed some advice and disconnected my PATA (i've refered to it as IDE this whole time) and booted into the DVD and let it repair my startup option.

From here it allowed me to boot into vista without the DVD in the drive (one problem down) but my XP installation wasn't ont he bootmenu. So I shut back down, reconnected my PATA drive (with the NTLDR and boot.ini) for XP and used Vistabootpro to create a new legacy OS and pointed it to my PATA drive.

Now when I restart it give me both options on the boot menu but choosing the XP OS just restarts the machine.

Remember, the XP lives on the second (extended) partition of my SATA drive but the bootloader for that (for whatever reason) lives on the PATA drive.

I follow some other posts and copied the boot folder and bootmgr file from my Vista drive onto my PATA drive and reinstalled the Vista bootloader. No change.

I'm frustrated and I need to study so I'm going to set this god-forsaken project aside for a few hours.
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Postby brhandler » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:30 am

A bump

As I said in last post, the XP selection doesn't work. It lists them both in the same selection field (due to xpbootpro's addition of a legacy drive). Before (when the system was working but before I swaped a harddrive with boot info) it would say "Boot Previous Operating System" and then it'd take me to a classic XP boot.ini controlled display and allowed me to select my editing system.

Is there a way to make it say "Boot Previous Operating System" and tell it to point to the new boot.ini file on the pata drive? Is there a way to rebuild ntdlr? <-- also a very likely cause as it may have not overwritten from the original drive.

I should have used a program like norton ghost to mirror the old drive to this new one...but it was kind of a spur of the moment sort of thing.
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Postby kd1966 » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:20 pm

I"m not able to view your picture links; I'm getting the "404 error", and BTW, welcome to PROnetworks! Please be patient as our members sort through what you've already posted. Enjoy the site!
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