Having two installations of XP on the same comp?

[The Sewer Rat]

My original goal was to dual boot Win2k with XP, with both OSs on separate HDs. So I installed 2k first, on the secondary HD. It worked fine, and so I installed XP on the primary HD. Eventually, it installed and runs fine - but now my 2k installation will not boot! After the boot loader screen, it just hangs with the message ‘file missing or corrupt - <windows>/system32/hal.dll’

So I replace this file, and the same error comes up…

Exactly the same installation method and order was used on my other rig, with no problems. So im guessing the problem is my old chaintec mobo (last BIOS update: 1999). It’s a CT-6bta3 with an intel chipset. Is this a bios problem?

Q: if it turns out I can’t rescue this 2k isntallaiton, does anyone have a dual-XP installation on a 2HD machine? Should I overwrite the 2k HD with XP? thanks

[Technoid]

I have had dual XP and W2k installs on 2hdd computer without any problems (i have also had it on the same HDD without problems)

[Evildead666]

I thought you had to install the first primary disk first (C and then add the other OS's afterwards...The system will always write boot data onto C:, for all the following OS's.

(I once had a triple boot, and had the great idea to re-install the C drive, and lost all the OS's, couldn't boot any of them...)

[UtwigMU]

did you change the active partition?
chek which one is active.

[High_Jumbllama]

You could try using XOSL after installing the first OS to block it from the other one and then after both are installed allow them to see each other. It's worth a shot.

Eidt:
Oh and it's free. It may need its own partition though. It will help you though.

[The Sewer Rat]

“did you change the active partition?
check which one is active.”

Isn’t the active partition meant to be the boot partition? Weird thing is: My boot partition is C on my primary HD BUT my active partition is listed as being D – on my secondary HD. This D is the one with 2k on it. Anyway…my boot ini looks correct:

“[boot loader]
timeout=6
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /bootlog
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect /bootlog”


doesn’t it? Am I right in thinking that ‘rdisk’ means HDD (ie primary HD= rdisk 0; secondary HD= rdisk 1.)?


re: XOSL. This looks interesting. I think I could do it if I reformatted my HDs and started from scratch – but do u know if its possible to simply create an extra primary fat partition and eventually boot xosl from there, keeping my existing xp-2k installations?

[Wombat]

I'm pretty sure that each physical hard drive should have one active partition. The choice between "active" partitions is made by the BIOS when you tell it which drive to boot from.

[Pace]

Make the boot partition active

[High_Jumbllama]

Originally posted by The Sewer Rat
“did you change the active partition?
check which one is active.”

Isn’t the active partition meant to be the boot partition? Weird thing is: My boot partition is C on my primary HD BUT my active partition is listed as being D – on my secondary HD. This D is the one with 2k on it. Anyway…my boot ini looks correct:

“[boot loader]
timeout=6
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /bootlog
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect /bootlog”


doesn’t it? Am I right in thinking that ‘rdisk’ means HDD (ie primary HD= rdisk 0; secondary HD= rdisk 1.)?


re: XOSL. This looks interesting. I think I could do it if I reformatted my HDs and started from scratch – but do u know if its possible to simply create an extra primary fat partition and eventually boot xosl from there, keeping my existing xp-2k installations?

You can have up to 4 primary partitions per HD as I understand but you need to be able to hide the first one from the second one while installing.

[UtwigMU]

Did you change your boot order between installations?

Was the drive you installed 2k on listed as C?

[The Sewer Rat]

No – ‘C’ was xp ALTHOUGH, i DID temporarily change it to D and make it a secondary drive (to another hd) so i could edit the half-installed xp partition's boot ini (during the install reboot, the old MBR decided to pop up...editing the boot.ini file, which wouldn’t let me read from the primary HD [it went something like 'signature34234234(partition)'...you ever seen that?]

Perhaps the BIOS thinks the D is still the XP partition? and thus when boot.ini tries to boot to 2k (which is on D), BIOS tries to boot to XP (which is now on C)?

Please help! Do I need to delete the MBR properly next time (I saw this on xosl webpage)? It is only this particular HD that gives me problems (barracuda 60gb). All my other (older) HDs format themselves fully…

[UtwigMU]

Try winnt/fixmbr or repairing boot record using windows CD.

Also how are your drives detected on bottup?