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Three hard drives: Three windows XP instances.


valkyrio

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So, I just recently repaired two of my drives that were bricked due to a firmware bug.

My issue now is that I have three drives, all of which have an OS already installed on it. All three of them work perfectly fine, and are running Windows XP

How can I change the boot order without having to go into the BIOS? I know Linux has some handy programs that run at boot, and let you pick which partition you want to run on. Is there any equivalent for windows? Or will I have to change the boot order every time?

P.S. Not sure if this is the right forum, but this is the one that seemed the most appropriate.

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So, I just recently repaired two of my drives that were bricked due to a firmware bug.

My issue now is that I have three drives, all of which have an OS already installed on it. All three of them work perfectly fine, and are running Windows XP

How can I change the boot order without having to go into the BIOS? I know Linux has some handy programs that run at boot, and let you pick which partition you want to run on. Is there any equivalent for windows? Or will I have to change the boot order every time?

P.S. Not sure if this is the right forum, but this is the one that seemed the most appropriate.

Hmmm.

If you cannot boot from each of them (when they are together) how can you say that they all three work allright?

Sure, when each of them is set "alone" as boot device, it works perfectly, but that does not necessarily mean that they will work together.

But don't worry, they will. :)

You can achieve that WITHOUT using ANY third part utility, simply adding a few entries to your boot.ini.

Right now most probably you have on your FIRST ACTIVE partition of FIRST hard disk a BOOT.INI file (that you can open/edit with Notepad) with this contents:

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

Simply add to it two lines:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 1st disk" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 2nd disk" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 3rd disk" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Read about BOOT.INI here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/discovery-unusua...pid-227601.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/boot-ini-and-dif...ive-t25365.html

If you are going with something else, you want to use grub4dos, as it is the most straightforward (and easily removable) option.

Take your time reading it's guide:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5187

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

You want to use at the beginning THIS (and NOT any other) setup:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/...ws.htm#windows1

If you have any question, post them BEFORE fiddling with files/things you are not SURE about.

jaclaz

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Do I add it to the drive that is currently booting up as default? Or do I add it to all three?
Right now most probably you have on your FIRST ACTIVE partition of FIRST hard disk a BOOT.INI file (that you can open/edit with Notepad) with this contents:

...

Simply add to it two lines:

How many drives do you have as FIRST DRIVE? :ph34r:

;)

jaclaz

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Will this work if there are different OSs in all three drives? Say disk 2 = ubuntu, disk 3 = vista?

Or will I have to use grub4dos in that case?

What do you mean "will this work"?

This only loads NT/2K/XP's on secondary drives, no more no less.

If you want to boot other OSes, you can use GRUB ,grub4dos, PLop, syslinux, gujin, lilo, and/or the Vista BOOTMGR, special bootsectors and what not, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but you have to catch the cat first thing. ;)

(it's only a metaphor, no cat was harmed in the making of this post)

jaclaz

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