Dual-booting on separate hard drives

[makoblue]

Hello there,

I am trying to dual-boot XP and Vista on separate hard-drives - Vista on my SATA HD and XP on a 20GB partition on my IDE HD.

Both OS's are installed fine, but in order to switch between them I have to go into the BIOS and change which hard-drive should boot primarily.

When I try to boot to XP using the bootloader I get a message saying:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware."

So I'm guessing that the Vista bootloader isn't finding the XP boot stuff, I'm guessing because the SATA hard-drive is set to boot first and XP is on the IDE HD.

I have used VistaBootPro to change the Vista bootloader to point to the E:drive (XP location) partition and have confirmed this by checking the bcdedit in cmd.

Any suggestions, please?

[CooperXS]

Vista bootloader is alien creature to me too.
I have two Vista x64 in different hard drives installed. When both are connected I get the OS selection menu, but if I unplug primary one and set to boot from secondary in BIOS it does not find the OS

After deleting secondary OS I had to spend 20 minutes researching how can i remove it from bootloader cos it's totally different then in XP...go figure

[jeffel]

Well i use Acronis Os selector to do that.
Acronis Os selector

Dont know if there is any freeware software that can do this.

[jmc41]

Can't you just set to boot from XP and use the XP boot.ini settings?

This solved a problem I used to have dual booting '98 and XP way back, must admit I haven't tried it with Vista though.

[makoblue]

Thanks for the replies.

Well i use Acronis Os selector to do that.
Acronis Os selector

Dont know if there is any freeware software that can do this.

Are your OS's on separate hard-drives or one hard-drive partitioned?

Can't you just set to boot from XP and use the XP boot.ini settings?

This solved a problem I used to have dual booting '98 and XP way back, must admit I haven't tried it with Vista though.

XP doesn't recognise Vista, but Vista recognises XP - which is why you have to use the Vista bootloader and edit that.

Any more ideas please?

[TAKTAK]

you could always look into booting via GRUB?

[makoblue]

What is GRUB, pardon my ignorance.

[TAKTAK]

What is GRUB, pardon my ignorance.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/

it is a different bootloader to the one that windows uses

[makoblue]

I looked into GRUB and other 3rd party boot loaders, but none of them can seem to dual-boot properly.

For example, I tried using GAG, which installed itself on my Windows XP partition and not my Vista drive, for some reason, but even so, when I set my XP drive to boot primarily and GAG came up, I get the same error message I mentioned in my first post.

What is going on? Is there no way to dual-boot these two drives without switching them in the BIOS?

[The Boy]

Both OS's are installed fine, but in order to switch between them I have to go into the BIOS and change which hard-drive should boot primarily.

Can't you press F12 and select the boot device instead of trawling through the BIOS? That's what I did when I had OSs on different drives. Not a solution but should make it easier in the meantime.

[makoblue]

What menu does F12 load up?

I'll give it a go, thanks!

[The Boy]

The boot selection menu...
On my computer it does anyway, don't know how general it is

[makoblue]

F12 didn't do anything for me, but I'll try other keys.

Oh, and I have another problem if anybody can help... My Win XP installation doesn't seem to recognise my ethernet internet connection - could this be a driver issue?

[TAKTAK]

F12 didn't do anything for me, but I'll try other keys.

Oh, and I have another problem if anybody can help... My Win XP installation doesn't seem to recognise my ethernet internet connection - could this be a driver issue?

yes, it could well be, install the motherboards chipset drivers, and what other drivers are needed...

[jeffel]

Are your OS's on separate hard-drives or one hard-drive partitioned?

Yes i ve tried booting from seperate hard-drives using acronis OS selector.And even quad booting no probs.

[makoblue]

Thanks for all the replies. I seem to have gotten dual-booting to work now by using a different copy of XP - XP Professional SP2.