Dual boot setup: how to configure?

[jeffgson]

I'm installing my second HD now. I'd like to configure the system so that on startup the system automatically boots to the master HS, unless within a set time period (60 seconds) I choose to boot to the slave HD?

When I had two different OS's on one HD somebody set this up for me, so I expect it can be done similarly for two HD's as well. In the BIOS the slave HD will be set as the secondary boot device, but on occasion I may want to boot to the slave drive so I can go to the Windows Update page and d/l all the critical updates for my slave that it needs. Since Microsoft automatically installs critical updates instead of allowing you to d/l them as .exe, I think its a safe guess that with a slave drive as a backup boot device, when you d/l critical updates as you are running your OS on your master drive, the updates are not installed on your slave drive.

 

[EeyoreX]

Since Microsoft automatically installs critical updates instead of allowing you to d/l them as .exe

Don't blame Microsoft. You can change this setting and download the updates, critical or not, and install them yourself.

\Dan

 

[jeffgson]

I'd still like to setup dual booting capability. The only way I can make sure my new HD boots at the moment is to rest the BIOS temporarily so its the primary boot device.

I can find my answer online, but I was hoping someone here could save me some research work. The OS is Win XP Pro, and the BIOS is Award v6.0.

 

[Viper96720]

YOu can download the updates and install when you want. First turn off automatic updating. Go to windows update then click personalize windows update. Check the display link to windows update catalog. Then go to the catalog and download updates and install when you want. If your slave drive is storage it doesn't need updates. Only the drive that the os is installed to.

 

[wseyller]

when you run windows install it will eventually show you all the partitions availabe. Unless you have drives that have multiple partitions, you will see two. One for which your current OS is installed to and a second for which you will use to install a second OS to. It will ask you to format, then installs away. After install and apon reboot you will be given a multiboot menu that will let you choose to boot from either OS.

Since both will have WinXP pro installed you fine, but if you had different versions of windows you would have to install the earlier version first. For example if you wanted Windows 98 and WinXp installed on seperate partitions you would have to install windows 98 first, then winxp otherwise it screws up the boot configuration. If you need to install linux and windows, always install linux before any windows OS.

 

[jeffgson]

Originally posted by: wseyller
when you run windows install it will eventually show you all the partitions availabe. Unless you have drives that have multiple partitions, you will see two. One for which your current OS is installed to and a second for which you will use to install a second OS to. It will ask you to format, then installs away. After install and apon reboot you will be given a multiboot menu that will let you choose to boot from either OS.

No good. I cloned my master to my slave; I didn't do a new install of XP Pro on my slave. So the multiboot option you speak of was not made availabale to me.

Actually, looking into the Automatic Updates - I didn't see the option mentioned for turning off Automatic Updates Under My Computer properties or System properties. I found the tab for Automatic Updates, but not the option for downloading and installing them myself. I checked the Windows Knowledge database and followed its instructions (or so I thought), but even though there is no sys admin but myself, I couldn't make this change. Its been rectified. From Control Panel I went to Administrative Tools, and then to Services. Under Services I was able to turn off Automatic Updates.


But to the other point, I saw that its the boot.ini file that I probably need to modify to get the dual boot function.

At the moment here is my boot.ini file:


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


So it would seem if I changed the parameters correctly, I could boot to one of two available disks. Since the master was cloned, the OS should detect identically on either slave or master.