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Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby Codger » Sat Apr 25, 2009 6:54 am

I have some other thoughts and results of tests which I need to assemble, but for now, what do you make of this?
diskman2.jpg
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby yeshuas » Sat Apr 25, 2009 1:59 pm

Have you tried leaving only the drive 1 disk in and doing a repair of the MBR with your XP disk? You will first want to make sure the 3 files boot.ini, NTDETECT, and ntldr are on that drive and that the boot.ini file is correct, then follow instructions below

Here is how you would do that

Boot with the XP installation CD.

When prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.

Enter the administrator password if prompted.

To fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

This assumes that your installation is on the C:\ drive. You will be presented with several scary warning lines the reading of which will make you want to say no. Microsoft is exceptionally vague regarding the conditions under which fixmbr can cause problems although they are clear about the consequences (losing all data on the hard drive), so use this at your own risk.

Type y and ENTER to fix the MBR.

Type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby Codger » Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:04 pm

First, a couple of observations.

1. When C: is disconnected, our carefully configured boot.ini is unavailable. (In our earlier tests there was a different boot.ini on D:)
2 Even when we duplicate the boot.ini to D: it is interpreted differently when C: is disconnected because D: has then become rdisk(0) instead of rdisk(1).

This is my current boot.ini which is now identical on both drives:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 1" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

Then some tests.
These results have been verified after careful attention to bios settings and test repeats.

When the bios points to C:

Option 1 gives error: "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. . . "

Option 2 gives as 1 above.

Option 3 boots XP on D: (because D: is rdisk(1)?)

When the bios points to D:

diskman3.jpg
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Option 1 gives error: "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. . . "

Option 2 boots XP on D: (because C: is rdisk(0)?)

Option 3 hangs on a black screen.

If C: is disconnected,

diskman4.jpg
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Option 1 gives error: "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. . . "

Option 2 boots XP on D: ^*^

Option 3 gives error
"Windows could not start because Windowsroot\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt. Please re-install a copy of the above file."

CONCLUSION
The correct [operating systems] line in boot.ini is:-
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

QED
Last edited by Codger on Sat Apr 25, 2009 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby Codger » Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:22 pm

yeshuas wrote:Have you tried leaving only the drive 1 disk in and doing a repair of the MBR with your XP disk?


Thanks for the input yesuas. Sorry I missed your post while I was doing mine. Yes, that has been in my mind for a while having been referred to in other similar threads. Until now, I had not understood whether or not there might have been something on disk 1 which may have been damaged by that procedure and which might have then inhibited the bootability that I still had. It was also still an option for drive D: which holds my good system, apps and data.

In the event I think I have cracked this one although I still have all three options still in place in boot.ini . Any observations that you may have about my solution would be most welcome.

Sincere thanks to you all for the attention that you have given to my issues. Without the help given here I would not have learned enough to be able to sort it.
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby yeshuas » Sat Apr 25, 2009 2:25 pm

Your conclusion should be correct if you are wanting to boot with either drive, by unplugging or changing the boot order in bios each time. I would not change the boot.ini in the drive that is currently working just yet, only the one that is not booting and then do the fixmbr to see if that corrects that disk first.
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby Codger » Sat Apr 25, 2009 3:02 pm

Thank you for your comment. I don't wish to boot with either drive, so I will not be constantly swapping back and forth. I just wanted to find a way to boot my new system that has been established on drive D: without the need for C: to be in place and all previous attempts to boot with C: disconnected failed. I have now done that so I will be looking to edit out the failing options in boot.ini with a view to booting directly to D: and formatting the present C: drive to use for other purposes (such as paging). I will also change the drive letters so that my default drive will become C: . (this is not a big issue in XP, although it can lead to confusion in Vista, I have learned.) I will then be re-installing a test server on the machine so that I can get back to my [web design] life. My travails with Vista, plus this issue have taken much of my time for weeks so this will be something of a relief!

Thanks again for your input.
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby Codger » Sun Apr 26, 2009 7:38 am

Stumbling on . . .
Taking yeshuas' advice, I have left my three boot options in place and
  • Formatted C:
  • Changed the drive letter of C: to Z: (to free up the letter C: for use on the main drive, currently D:)
  • Renamed the drives to something more meaningful, in case I get confused (You would be forgiven for thinking I already was.)
Now I know that I am not allowed to change the letter of a system or boot drive, which means I won't be able to change D: to C:, so I
  • Copied ntldr, NTDETECT.COM and boot.ini to Z:
  • Changed the bios to point to Z:
  • Booted using Option 3
Problem:
Now, although the 'system' tag has moved to Z:, the main drive D: has been tagged 'boot' so I still can't change its letter to C: :eek:

diskman5.jpg
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I have done this before (a few years back, perhaps) so I am sure there is a way. What am I missing?
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Re: Abandon first drive and boot direct to Vista

Postby masudkarim » Fri May 01, 2009 6:52 pm

Ok got a copule of questions. I am running vista 32 on a amd 64 dual core pc. Here is my goal:

1. Add windows 98 on to a 10-50gb partition on my second harddriver (already a 500gb ntfs formatted drive with data on it I want to keep).

2. HAve working nvidia drivers for my nvidia 8400 graphics card.

3. play win98 lucasarts games in their native environment with the benefit of the current generation of hardware.

Is this possible?

Do I need a usb floppy drive to get this to work? I don't have a preinstalled floppy drive. Can I use a boot image on a cd for this?

I have my pc hooked up to my hdtv via a dvi-hdmi adapter. WOuld I need to haul up my spare monitor to make this work while its formating and no drivers are present?

What about cd drivers and sound support? I do have a usb soundblaster live adapter that I believe works with win98. THat would be ideal. I don't know if my pc's onboard 5.1 has available 98 drivers - it was for a vista os initially.

Suggestions and warnings are welcome. Thanks.

I have briefly read some articles saying you need to install the old os first and then install vista for a functional dual boot. Is that true? If so I would need to purchase a standalone copy of vista as my pc is an oem prenistall job and would make this excersise needlessly expensive.

------

ps. I have tried virtualbox but there are two issues I have with it. one - it won't automatically allow for cd/dvd drive passthrough and it doesn't support 3d grpahics.

Are there any virtual machines that support 3d accelerated graphics for the 9x platform? And what about the last nvidia forceware drivers for 98 - they seem to only support the nvidia 6x series. Can these be made to work in 98 with a nvida 8x sereis card?
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