Dual Boot FAQ please

Charlie, Andre, Carlos, anyone else,

There were a bunch of postings on the public MS 64bit newsgroup about dual
booting a while ago but I didn't save them (yeah, dumb me). Of course, now
I'm looking to dual boot and cannot find the info.

Would any of you happen to have a pointer to those messages or the
information in them in your own sites or could one of you post something
like a "dual boot primer" to the MS public group? I saw someone else asking
the question this morning (Sunday 11-20-05). What ever happened to those
FAQ files that used to remain active in newsgroups? Thanks!

Regards,

Diego

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559/en-us

Install the oldest OS first on partition C:, then the next on D:

/Max
XP x64 in dualboot with Vista x64

 

Like D. Castano, install the oldest version first, the latest last, and
remember to install both operating systems on separate partitions, which
means you would need to create the partition in XP x86 first, minimum
partition size for XP x86 recommended is about 20GBs. After installing XP
x86, boot from XP Pro x64 CD you will launch into the text based setup
similar XP x86, load any necessary F6 drivers for SATA/RAID hard disk so
that it can be recognized by XP Pro x64.

 

Just scan down the messages about a dozen or so.

 

If I ever get caught up, I'll do a detailed blog on it. It's come up enough
to make it worth the effort.

 

Thanks Max, Andre, Colin and Charlie.

However, my case is a bit different than the posting you refer to, Colin. I
guess I should have started at the beginning rather than sending you all in
a goose chase. Sorry.

So here's the whole story. When I built my latest machine I got a new hard
drive where I installed XP64. Then I dragged my old hard drive from my old
clunker (with XP32 on it) and installed it in my new machine. I didn't
think about dual booting then but now, after working with XP64 for a bit, I
find that I cannot burn CDs to either of my 2 LG burners (1 IDE, 1 USB and
they are both recognized and both work ok except for burning). The burning
software I have (Nero/InCD) doesn't seem to be friendly to XP64. Hmmm, I'm
assuming that's the problem.

So I was thinking that one way to solve the problem was to boot XP32 when I
need to burn CDs and then just go back to XP64. From what I've read, I may
have to start over to get this messy thing to work (unless someone out there
has other brilliant ideas).

Or, maybe there already is some CD/DVD burning software that plays well with
XP64 out there. Anyone knows of one?

Thanks,

Diego

 

I don't think INCD is compatible with x64. For the best

Now for the Dual boot reconfiguration. John Barnes wrote the following:

You will have some problems. The boot.ini won't reflect both systems, for
one. Just make copies of ntldr and ntdetect.com in a new folder on your
system
drive. Install the XP32 system normally (on your second drive). When it
boots to the XP32 system, you can go to explorer and copy the saved files
over the ones on your system drive. Go to system properties / startup and
make sure that both systems are in the boot.ini and either fix it there (if
necessary) or use the Recovery Console to fix the boot.ini.

 

The native cd burning works. InCD, like other packet writing programs does
not work.

 

Pardon my ignorance but I'm not familiar with how to access the native cd
burning app. Can you point me in its direction?

Thanks,

Diego

 

Open Help and Support (from the Start menu, right side) and notice the
Search field in the upper left. Type "burn cd" and links will show up in
the left panel under Pick a Task and Overviews, Articles, and Tutorials.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)

 

http://www.backtec.com/writecds.htm

Works very well in XP 64.

 

Thanks Ted. Do you know if iTunes will talk to Write CDs?

 

Thanks Ted. Do you know if iTunes will talk to Write CDs?

 

I thought iTunes is a subscription to buy music.
How does a CD writer would talk to iTunes ?
Just curious, personally I more into buying albums, never
got into iPod or iTunes much.

 

Hi, yes this would be really, really useful.

There is also the article by Barb Bowman on Dual installation here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/64bit/bowman_05nov07.mspx
Dear to my heart because I have a Ferrari 4005 - unfortunately pre-installed
with XP Pro x64. Because now I think I need to set-up a dual boot with XP Pro
(86) as the first OS.
I do software development and need to support a lot of VB6 legacy code - and
almost ALL my VB6 OCXs fail registration in Windows 64.

This dual boot change means (I think, unless someone knows a way of swapping
x64 to drive D: from C: !)
1) removing everything I have already installed.
2) buying both XP Pro (86) and another copy of XP Pro x64 - because for some
reason Acer do not supply the install CDs for x64 - this just stinks -
suppliers that do this should be Blacklisted.
3) reformat both partitions and follow standard oldest-first dual boot
installation.

I would have used the excellent and superb HyperOS
(http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/) but, unfortunately it doesn't support 64
bit (yet).

So, a FAQ or Blog on this would be great.

Thanks

 

Acer didn't even copy the install disk images onto the hard drive for you?
And you paid what for it???

I'd highly suggest ghosting the hard drive before doing anything else, both
to prepare for the inevitable crash that will occur one day, and so that you
don't have to buy another copy of x64 Windows.

Using that should allow a rather simple restore of x64 after installing x32
Windows, with maybe some editing of your boot files as has been described
numerous times in this newsgroup. You really shouldn't need to re-format and
then re-install x64 after installing x32.

 

Many here use Nero. Just don't try to install the INCD.
As to dual booting, you have both x64 and x86 on your machine now from
different installs and just want to boot to either.
I assume you are set up to boot to x64, so the easiest way to add x86 if it
is visible would be to go into recovery console and execute a fixboot
/rebuild
that will add the bootable Windows system to your bootup screen. Later you
can clean it up in system properties/advanced/startup

 

Hello!

I think that this can be done with careful planning! :>

Are you sure that there is not an image of x64 CD on your disk. Or maybe
there is a hidden partition with ISO image...

Servus, Roman

 

After installing XP x86, boot from XP Pro x64 CD you will launch into the

I've hosed my home machine over the weekend trying to do just that. Here's
the story...I'll try to keep it short, but I do have to get into some
installation sequence details...

I've been running XP Pro (32-bit) on a RAID-1 SATA setup for months
problem-free. After I installed the OS on the RAIDed SATA drives (a pair of
250GB Western Digital drives), I moved two older IDE drives I had at the
time in another machine (120 and 160GB) into this one so I could use them as
plain data drives.

The only "somewhat odd" thing I had with this setup was XP identifying the
IDE drives as drive 0 and drive 1, followed by the SATA RAID (drive 2) on
which the OS itself is running. My BIOS doesn't appear to let me choose
(permanently) between the IDE and SATA drives in the boot sequence unless I
hit F8, so it always tries to boot off the IDE drive first, gives up, and
then loads from the SATA drives. No biggie.

For the record, the motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E (939 socket with Nvidia
chipset). I'm using its own (hardware-based) RAID setup, *not* XP's
software RAID.

Last weekend I decided to give XP64 a try as I have access to it through my
MSDN Universal subscription, and I have some software I'll have to port over
to Win64 in the future. I grabbed the latest 64-bit drivers from Nvidia's
site (one hefty 30MB file, which contains drivers for everything from the
onboard Ethernet to onboard audio, IDE, SATA, etc), created a floppy with
the 64-bit SATA RAID drivers, popped in the CD, hit F6, loaded the drivers,
and installed the whole OS, without any error being reported along the way.
Great, I thought...

When the OS came up for the first time, one of the very first dialog boxes
that came up was the hardware wizard complaining it couldn't load the RAID
driver. Indeed, Explorer showed every single RAIDed partition twice (!!!!)
and the Logical Disk Manager showed two independent 250GB drives with the
exact same partitions (DOH!) operating simultaneously.

I reran the whole 30+MB Nvidia driver setup program, and let it install all
the drivers it thought it needed. I rebooted, and Explorer showed only a
single 250GB drive. "Better", I thought, but I was still worried about the
Win32 setup, since I had an OS running (albeit very briefly) and thinking
these were two independent drives.

So I tried to reboot into XP x86. BSOD. Tried again in safe mode--BSOD.
Meanwhile, XP x64 was still perfectly functional and could access anything
off the RAIDed drives. But since the x86 OS wasn't functional, there wasn't
an awful lot I could do to try to fix it.

I ran the setup from the x86 CD and got to the recovery console. I managed
to get there, but scratched my head trying to figure out what my real
options were at this point...

So I reran the x86 setup again, and tried to reinstall on top of itself (of
course, loading the 32-bit RAID driver at the F6 prompt). After 4
consecutive installs (each taking over half an hour), only to be greeted by
a BSOD at the first reboot each time, I gave up, went to the BIOS's RAID
setup, broke the RAID and recreated it. Only then did XP x86 manage to get
installed without failing. Of course by then everything was gone.

Now...I haven't lost a single byte of data as every data file I care about
had been diligently backed up on another machine that morning, but I did
have to spend the rest of the weekend reinstalling all my software (not to
mention I'll be spending the next couple of days going through all the usual
OS tweaks). More than slightly miffed, once XP x86 was back up and running,
I nuked the x64 installation from the IDE drive and swore not to ever try to
dual-boot a RAIDed setup ever again... >:-(

So...what went wrong? I'm sure there's a REALLY stupid assumption from my
part in there somewhere (once I know what it is, you can all point and
laugh) but I can't quite figure it out. If I have a *hardware* RAID set
up, and the OS's driver fails to load, then surely the OS "should" simply
not see the drives at all, instead of showing two independent drives?
Again, x64 was installed on the primary IDE drive (drive 0), while the
RAIDed drives are SATA (identified simply as "drive 2" by Logical Disk
Manager)...

Thoughts?

 

Hi Diego:
Sorry for my belated answer.
I see all the cool guys that hang around here have already briefed you.
Just one more recommendation.
I like to reserve an aditional partition for "My Documents", "Favorites" and
Outlook's "outlook.pst".
This way whenever I have to do a clean install, I don't lose (or have to
backup) my valuable information.
Just format the partition where the OS and app's reside.
My important info does not lie there.
Carlos