Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
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This forum is meant for support of PRO Software only. PROnetworks reserves the right to edit any topic title to better explain the contents of a post. We also may move your post to a more suitable forum if necessary.
It may take our support staff up to 24 hours to respond to your problem. We appreciate your patience.
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
With hindsight you are clearly absolutely right about disconnecting other drives when installing an OS; I will certainly never bother with dual boot again. However, I am not changing "continuously" as you suggest; this is the first time I have ever done it and I only disconnect the C: drive to try to establish if I can boot without it.
I am nervous about changing disk(0) because your colleague NT50 in another thread said:
"The major components of the boot.ini are rdisk(#) and partition(#). Do not change disk(#) unless you are running SCSI drives."
Are you absolutely sure that is what you mean?
Thanks again for your help.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
Yes, try it on the entry that's not working and if it still doesn't work change it back to (0) again. As far as I know the entry there for a SCSI drive is scsi(0)
Something else you can try is to type msconfig into the run dialog box which is on the start menu, go to the Boot.ini tab and click on Check All Boot Paths.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
Right, let's see if I can remember all this . . .
Firstly, the boot.ini mod on the C: drive gave something like " Windows could not start because of a disk hardware problem . . . "
I then changed it back again.
The same mod for the D: drive added a third option to the boot menu "Windows (default)" which worked OK taking me to D: .
When I disconnected C: it reverted to "NTLDR is missing".
Clearly, it is still looking to drive C: for boot system files.
Firstly, the boot.ini mod on the C: drive gave something like " Windows could not start because of a disk hardware problem . . . "
I then changed it back again.
The same mod for the D: drive added a third option to the boot menu "Windows (default)" which worked OK taking me to D: .
When I disconnected C: it reverted to "NTLDR is missing".
Clearly, it is still looking to drive C: for boot system files.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
OH! I forgot say, the Check All Boot Paths gave an OK result.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
I'm fresh out of ideas now codger. I'm just surprised that something as seemingly simple as the boot.ini can cause such a hassle. I'll post for other support staff to see what they think. At this stage I don't want to suggest a repair install of the XP installation you can't boot to. That's a last resort, but it should auto sort whatever the reason is you can't boot.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
Trouble is, it might wreck the only way that I can boot atm.
Grav!ty, I am seriously very grateful to you for your support. There is going to be a solution to this and we will all learn a thing or two from the excercise. I have been looking at customers' suggestions for development of VistaBootPRO and I am sure that PROnetworks will get something out of this too. If any of your colleagues can make a contribution that would be great. I will be patient and defer my plans to install a local test server until it is resolved.
Grav!ty, I am seriously very grateful to you for your support. There is going to be a solution to this and we will all learn a thing or two from the excercise. I have been looking at customers' suggestions for development of VistaBootPRO and I am sure that PROnetworks will get something out of this too. If any of your colleagues can make a contribution that would be great. I will be patient and defer my plans to install a local test server until it is resolved.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
All I can say is I've had a couple of XP's in a dual boot on two separate drives while both are connected but it seems that's not what you want to do Codger. I can't think of any way to keep them totally separate unless you install XP into one drive while the other is physically disabled and vice versa. That way they will be totally isolated from each other.
I remember a few years ago that someone mentioned a hardware drive switch though I don't remember much more. I do remember removing power from drives when I wanted to boot into one or the other and subsequently killed my 80GB IDE drive because the power was still on when disconnecting it. I've since dual booted a pair of XPs with both drives connected and never had an issue between one and the other, not even viruses or malware, besides the activation issue if it's the same XP disc.
The problem you're having is that drive 0 will have the MBR records for both and when you disconnect that drive, you will have a failed boot on drive 1 because there is no MBR boot info. Your call man.
I remember a few years ago that someone mentioned a hardware drive switch though I don't remember much more. I do remember removing power from drives when I wanted to boot into one or the other and subsequently killed my 80GB IDE drive because the power was still on when disconnecting it. I've since dual booted a pair of XPs with both drives connected and never had an issue between one and the other, not even viruses or malware, besides the activation issue if it's the same XP disc.
The problem you're having is that drive 0 will have the MBR records for both and when you disconnect that drive, you will have a failed boot on drive 1 because there is no MBR boot info. Your call man.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -- Carl Jung
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- augie
- Community Director
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- Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2002 1:55 am
- Location: Laurentians, Quebec
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
Thanks for the input Augie
Yup. That's a cool assessment of the problem. You got it in one. It's like poetry.
Classically, what we need now is some development and a resolution, man.
augie wrote:The problem you're having is that drive 0 will have the MBR records for both and when you disconnect that drive, you will have a failed boot on drive 1 because there is no MBR boot info. Your call man.
Yup. That's a cool assessment of the problem. You got it in one. It's like poetry.
Classically, what we need now is some development and a resolution, man.
Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista
Codger wrote:Thanks for the input Augieaugie wrote:The problem you're having is that drive 0 will have the MBR records for both and when you disconnect that drive, you will have a failed boot on drive 1 because there is no MBR boot info. Your call man.
Yup. That's a cool assessment of the problem. You got it in one. It's like poetry.
Classically, what we need now is some development and a resolution, man.
Hehehe Only things that I can see are the switch option or keep fiddling with cables. I gave up on those 'solutions'. Good luck on your search for the holy grail.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -- Carl Jung
eVGA X58 tri-SLI, i7 930 @ 3.8GHz., Corsair 6GB Dominator, Inno3D GTX470, eVGA260
ASUS P8P67 Pro, i7 2600K @4.60 GHz, 8GB RAM, eVGA GTX 460
eVGA X58 tri-SLI, i7 930 @ 3.8GHz., Corsair 6GB Dominator, Inno3D GTX470, eVGA260
ASUS P8P67 Pro, i7 2600K @4.60 GHz, 8GB RAM, eVGA GTX 460
- augie
- Community Director
- Posts: 7870
- Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2002 1:55 am
- Location: Laurentians, Quebec
38 posts
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