How to dual boot 2 XP's?

[tombuur]

I have spent hours trying to do this. Months ago I gave up, and now once again I have tried in vain. No help searching this forum. I have Acronis Image Home and Disk Dir. Suite.

I want to make a copy of a well-functioning XP to the same hard disk so that I can boot up with the second copy to test new software before making changes to the main system. I have managed to make a copy so that I have two partitions with XP on drive 1. The OS Selector also shows two Windows systems, but always boots to the same one no matter what I do.

I have searched this forum and found stuff about sysprep and editing boot.ini etc. But this is certainly no simple way of selecting OS as the impression the adverts for Acronis software try to make you think. Do I have to make all these tweaks manually? Where is the FAQ describing the procedure in simple steps?

[Brian K]

tombuur,

This web site explains how to do it so that the OSs are independent. Make sure your destination partition is unallocated space when you create the WinXP image. Or make sure the destination partition is unallocated space when you clone the WinXP partition. Otherwise you will have drive letter issues as the original WinXP will have "seen" the destination partition.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

I have two WinXPs at present but as a test I had 15 on the one HD.

Don't install your boot manager until the final step. So if it's there now, uninstall it.

[tombuur]

Thanks, will try again tomorrow.

[Brian K]

Any questions? Just ask.

You needn't read the section on OSs in Extended Partitions.

[thecreator]

-{ Quote: "I have spent hours trying to do this. Months ago I gave up, and now once again I have tried in vain. No help searching this forum. I have Acronis Image Home and Disk Dir. Suite.

I want to make a copy of a well-functioning XP to the same hard disk so that I can boot up with the second copy to test new software before making changes to the main system. I have managed to make a copy so that I have two partitions with XP on drive 1. The OS Selector also shows two Windows systems, but always boots to the same one no matter what I do.

I have searched this forum and found stuff about sysprep and editing boot.ini etc. But this is certainly no simple way of selecting OS as the impression the adverts for Acronis software try to make you think. Do I have to make all these tweaks manually? Where is the FAQ describing the procedure in simple steps?" }-

Hi tombuur,

You can't simply copy an operating system from one partition to another partition and have it work.

You need to install it. I have two copies of Windows XP Home Edition installed on the same Hard Drive. One is Drive E:\ and the other is Drive G:\ and the Windows XP Boot Manager is controlling the Boot and works fine.

Problem exists with the installed programs in the operating system and the Windows Registry pointing to another drive, instead of the current drive partition and the problem is compounded if your documents exist on another Hard Drive as well.

Works fine.

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "You can't simply copy an operating system from one partition to another partition and have it work. You need to install it." }-
This is only really true if you are using the Windows Boot Manager (as you are).

In the simplest form, XP can be copied (or restored) to another partition and boot just fine as long as...


it was copied (or restored) outside of Windows
the booting partition is Active
the boot.ini file on the booting partition points to the correct partition(#)
all the other OS partitions are Hidden

This can be done manually with just DD by changing the Active and Hidden partitions to the correct settings for the OS you want to boot.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "
You can't simply copy an operating system from one partition to another partition and have it work.
" }-
Hi thecreator,

That's one of the ways I create a multi-boot system. You can do multiple restores of the same image or multiple clones of the same partition. See this page on "The Microsoft Way" and "The Third Party Way". Interesting reading.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

[tombuur]

Sorry, I can't figure this out. Just more confused today by reading the links. Nowhere is there a clear step by step instruction about how to set up a dual boot system. Particularly with Disk Director/Acronis Image.

Looks like the only realistic solution is to get a swapable harddisk for booting and then insert the system I want before start up. If I cannot make a copy of my preferred working system, but have to install again from bottom up, then Disk Director is no use at all.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "Sorry, I can't figure this out. " }-
tombuur,

I'm happy to go through this with you. If you want to.
How large is your HD? How many partitions? How large is each partition? Where do you store your TI images? One or two HDs? External HD?

[tombuur]

Okay, thanks, so let's try to create a step by step procedure.

I have 3 internal harddrives in my computer. But only one is used for system (drive 1, 120GB), and that's where I want to boot from and have the OS installed, preferably as drive c when working. The others (2x500GB) are used for data and backup. That's where I store Acronis images too.

I imagine having partions around 40GB on the system drive. I only need the two XPs. In principle XP1 will be the one used for production. From time to time I will make a copy of that, XP2, to test demo programs, updates etc. before installing them in XP1. My current XP1 takes up about 16GB.

So from here I can start with XP1 installed in a single partition on the drive 1 and make whatever copies and partitions necessary using Arcronis Image Home 10, and Disk Director 10. If you recommend the recent Acronis Image 11 I will buy the update. As I understand it can do a "roll-back" so it might come in handy for testing purposes of XP2, anyway. On the other hand a new clone of XP1 could do the same.

[Brian K]

OK. Let's assume your WinXP 1 partition is 40 GB. Delete all other partitions from your first HD so you have around 80 GB of unallocated space. Uninstall any boot manager you have installed. Now create an image of WinXP 1 with your Acronis TI. Write the image to somewhere on your second or third HD.

Shutdown your computer and don't restart until we are finished the following steps. Boot to your Disk Director 10 CD and create a primary partition of 40 GB (actually make it the same size as WinXP 1) to follow your current partition. You will still have unallocated space at the end of the HD. We'll deal with that later.

Now boot to your TI CD and restore your image to the second partition. You don't have to restore the MBR or set the partition active.

Now boot to your Disk Director 10 CD and make sure the first partition is active. Make sure the second partition is "hidden".

ONLY NOW, boot to Windows. Your WinXP 1 will be C: drive and the new OS won't have a drive letter. But you will be able to see the new partition in Disk Management. It should be Healthy (Unknown partition) with no drive letter.

I'm going to bed soon but let me know when you have completed the above steps. Don't go any further yet. Your WinXP 1 will operate normally.

Could you copy and paste the boot.ini of your WinXP 1 to your reply when you have finished the above steps.

[tombuur]

"Now boot to your TI CD and restore your image to the second partition. "

Can't do that.

I never get the option of installing to nothing but the original XP1 partition or MBR and track 0.

Sorry, TI confuses the user here. It says please select a partition ... to restore and only gives XP1. But if I proceed I get get another please select ... to restore to. Not very clear. Should be improved by Acronis. I will see what happens now.

[Brian K]

I'm still awake.

When you created the image, as source did you choose the C: partition or the whole HD? It should be only the C: partition.

[tombuur]

I found out how to proceed (added in above post) and I used an image of the partition, not the whole disk.

I now have XP2 in Computer Management\Disk Management, but without a letter and healthy. BTW Where is "Computer Management". I always have to use the help function and its link to get to it.

Here is my boot.ini

[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


I found this in System Properties\Advanced\Startup and Recovery\Edit
Just by coincidence I knew. Because boot.ini is hidden to the search function, so where on the disk is it? Another hurdle for the dummy here.

[Texcritter]

-{ Quote: "


It is in the Root directory of your computer (normally C)

[tombuur]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Looks like you need to uncheck "hide operating system files" in tools\folder options... to see it. I only checked "show hidden files" which is another thing clearly (or not so clearly).

[Brian K]

tombuur,

Good work. Now to examine the boot.ini of WinXP 2.

Boot to your Disk Director 10 CD and follow this procedure

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=176064#10

to make your boot.ini like this. (you are changing a 1 to a 2, twice)

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

It's possible Acronis TI has already made the alterations for you. If so, good.

Shutdown and boot to WinXP 1 to make sure things are still OK. Shutdown and boot to your Disk Director 10 CD again. Do what MudCrab suggested above...

-{ Quote: "This can be done manually with just DD by changing the Active and Hidden partitions to the correct settings for the OS you want to boot." }-
As you want to boot WinXP 2, make that partition active and make WinXP 1 "hidden". Vice versa when later you want to boot to WinXP 1.

Report back when that is working.

PS Look in Disk Management to confirm which is the System Partition. When you are in WinXP 2 the second partition should be System (and also be your C: drive).

[MudCrab]

Also, note that if TI 10 changed the partition table order, then partition 1 will be in slot 2 and partition 2 will be in slot 1. If this happens, then you'll need to reverse the values in the boot.ini files for the partition(#) entries.

For example: XP1 will have partition(2) and XP2 will have partition(1)

As Brian said, TI 10 should have made the boot.ini file changes for you.

[Brian K]

MudCrab, I well remember your posts on this topic and I was hoping tombuur would be an exception. Looks like he is as his WinXP 1 boot.ini is partition(1).

Could you take him through the OSS stage after he can boot both OSs with the Disk Director 10 technique?

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "MudCrab, I well remember your posts on this topic and I was hoping tombuur would be an exception. Looks like he is as his WinXP 1 boot.ini is partition(1)." }-
I noticed this too and wondered why. It would be nice to see a screenshot of the partition table and the DD disk/partition screen (in manual mode).

-{ Quote: "Could you take him through the OSS stage after he can boot both OSs with the Disk Director 10 technique?" }-
I can certainly try. I would suggest that if he's going to use OSS, than he create a small Primary FAT32 partition at the end of the drive (100MB or so) and OSS be installed there (custom install of OSS) instead of to one of the XP installations (especially since he's indicated that he intends to "update" his XP2 with XP1 from time to time).

[tombuur]

Well, I don't what you are going to pull me through, but so far I cannot make any of the partitions active/inactive. That choice is greyed out in the Disk menu in DDS. So I am not getting in further with Brian's advice right now.

... And now it is close to bedtime in Europe. Just need get my wife from the airport.

[MudCrab]

If you boot to DD from the DD CD and select Manual mode, it should show your partitions. The Primary partitions will be yellow and the logical partitions will be blue. Only Primary partitions can be set Active.

When you created the new partition for XP2, did you make it Primary NTFS? DD defaults to Logical for new partitions.

When you restored the XP1 partition image with TI to the XP2 partition did you select Primary as the partition type or was it Logical? If the partition is Logical, that would explain why your boot.ini in XP1 still referenced partition(1) instead of being changed to partition(2).

Do you have TI 9, build 3,677? If so (and it works properly on your system), you could use it to image and restore the XP1 partition and not worry about the partition table changes. However, you'd need to manually edit the boot.ini file on the XP2 partition. If you don't have (and use) TI 9, build 3,677, TI 10 should automatically adjust the boot.ini files for the new partition table order and you shouldn't need to make any changes to the files.

[Brian K]

tombuur,

Have you already edited the boot.ini for WinXP 2? Good. Continue from here....

When you boot to the Disk Director boot CD, choose Manual mode.

As MudCrab mentioned we expect to see two primary partitions, coloured yellow. In the Flags column, WinXP 1 should be Pri, Act and WinXP 2 should be Pri, Hid.

Right click the WinXP 2 partition and click Advanced. Click Set Active and click OK for the warning.

Again right click the WinXP 2 partition and click Advanced. Click Unhide and click OK for the warning.

Right click the WinXP 1 partition and click Advanced. Click Hide.

Now the flags should be reversed. In the Flags column, WinXP 2 should be Pri, Act and WinXP 1 should be Pri, Hid.

Click the Commit button. etc and restart.

Now you should boot to WinXP 2.

Problems?

[tombuur]

Good morning from Denmark.

I made XP2 partition logical, because I was not given the choice of making it primary. It was greyed out.

So I guess we are in a blind alley here and need to go back?

[tombuur]

Good morning from Denmark.

I made XP2 partition logical, because I was not given the choice of making it primary. It was greyed out.

So I guess we are in a blind alley here and need to go back?

-----

I have now gone back to the step where the XP1 image is restored to the XP2 partition. Strangely, this time I get the "primary" option which I definately not did the last time. But then I also used unallocated space, I believe.

If this works I will eventually go back and test the whole procedure from the very beginning.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "Good morning from Denmark.

I made XP2 partition logical, because I was not given the choice of making it primary. It was greyed out.

So I guess we are in a blind alley here and need to go back?" }-
Maybe not. Boot to the DD CD and right click the WinXP 2 partition. Click Advanced, Convert. Choose Primary Partition. Commit.

See if that works.

[MudCrab]

tombuur,

Good night from California (I fell asleep in the recliner so I'm going to bed shortly...)

If the XP2 partition is Logical, then the easiest thing to do is probably convert it to Primary and Brian suggests. Like this:
195383
195384
After this conversion, you will need to edit the boot.ini file on the partition to point to the correct partition(#) value per the partition table entry (it should be 2 if there are only two partitions).

When using DD, I suggest you use the Manual Mode as it gives you a lot more control over all the procedures. You can only create a maximum of four Primary partitions or three Primary partitions and one or multiple Logical partitions. How many partitions are on this drive? It sounded like you only had one (XP1) and it used the entire disk. You then resized it and created XP2 in the unallocated space. You should have seen a screen like this:
195382

Select Primary and NTFS for the XP2 partition. Once it's created, you should be able to either restore you XP1 image to it. Also, as noted previously, I would create the partition leaving a little room (100MB or so) for an OSS partition. Your drive should look something like this:
[XP1 NTFS Primary 40GB][XP2 NTFS Primary 40GB][OSS FAT32 Primary OSS 100MB]
or if you want a data partition for the remainder...
[XP1 NTFS Primary 40GB][XP2 NTFS Primary 40GB][OSS FAT32 Primary OSS 100MB][DATA NTFS Logical @25GB (whatever space remains)]

Don't forget to LABEL your partitions with meaningful names like XP1, XP2, OSS and DATA. That way it's easy to tell them apart. If you restore your XP1 TI image to XP2, XP2 will be relabeled whatever XP1 was, so you'll want to change it after the restore, especially since they are the same size.

[tombuur]

Didn't work. I am going back to what I had before Brian and I started this quest. From there I will repeat all the step. I don't want a lot of emergency solutions at this stage. What we are after is a solid step by step procedure to get a 2 x XP boot system.

[Brian K]

OK. The most important part of the whole procedure is creating the image of WinXP 1 without other partitions on your first HD. You have done that, so it doesn't need to be repeated. Good luck with this attempt. Don't worry, it will work.

(This is the reason for having unallocated space at the imaging stage. If you create an image of a partition while the destination partition is visible and then restore to that destination partition, the OS won't boot due to drive letter problems. It's fixable but it is better to avoid the situation in the first place)

[tombuur]

Now it works.

What happened the first time was that I was not allowed to restore XP1 as primary to the XP2 partition. The only options were Active and Logical. Afraid that Active might interfere I chose Logical. This time it chose Active, and found that Windows or whoever overrode the Active setting anyway and just made it primary.

So to change from XP1 to XP2 and back I need to go and make the Active/Hide changes in DDS? I can't use a boot manager here?

I have written a "brainless" step procedure about how to set this up. Just wondering about the discussion of changing partition(1) to partition (2) in boot. ini - is it possible that these numbers could be different for someone else following the procedure?

What about the vacant space. Can it be used for yet a third OS?

What if I want to update XP2 with a newer version of XP1 at a later stage. Can I just make an image of XP1 again and restore it to XP2, or are there problems here?

[MudCrab]

In the the XP2 setup you now have working, since it was restored from an XP1 image, another restore later shouldn't cause a problem. However, with any boot manager you use, you may want to created an Entire Disk Image backup before you restore the image just in case something goes wrong. If you don't want the possibility of a boot manager messing things up and you don't frequently change between them, you can just DD to make the changes manually.

Yes, you could use the remaining unallocated space for another OS, a DATA partition, etc.

Yes, you can use a boot manager (like OSS) to do the hiding, unhiding and Active setting automatically.

-----

Before you continue with OSS, you need to verify that the boot.ini values are correct for each OS. One of them should be partition(1) and one of them should be partition(2). If both of them are the same value, then something is wrong.

If you created the small 100MB Primary FAT32 partition for OSS, this is what I would do to install it:

Note: Make sure your DD CD includes the OSS programs on it. If you didn't create the CD with those programs checked, use Acronis Media Builder to create a new DD CD with those programs.


Boot to the DD CD, select Manual Mode
Set the OSS partition Active (apply the change)
Unhide both XP1 and XP2 (no partitions should be hidden) (apply the changes)
Exit DD and reboot to the DD CD -- DO NOT BOOT INTO WINDOWS
Select to Install OSS
Select the Custom Install option
Select the OSS partition as the destination partition for the installation
Let OSS install
Once the installation is complete, remove the DD CD and reboot
OSS should boot and add entries for XP1 and XP2
Right-click on each and select Properties
Make sure that the correct partition is Active and the other XP partition is Hidden:
For XP1 - Make sure the XP1 partition is Active and the XP2 partition is Hidden
For XP2 - Make sure the XP2 partition is Active and the XP1 partition is Hidden
Once these settings are correct, you should be able to boot correctly into either of your XPs.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "Now it works.
" }-
tombuur,

That's great news. So you can now choose your OS to boot by that confusing DD CD method that I described? Once you can do this you can move on to the boot manager stage.

How did the boot.ini finish up? Was WinXP 1 partition(1) or partition(2) in the boot.ini?

-{ Quote: "I have written a "brainless" step procedure about how to set this up. Just wondering about the discussion of changing partition(1) to partition (2) in boot. ini - is it possible that these numbers could be different for someone else following the procedure?" }-
Yes, it's possible. TI 10 changes the partition table slots when it restores an image, other software doesn't. MudCrab has done a LOT of work on this topic.

[tombuur]

XP1 was partition(1) and I set XP2 to partition(2).

I will have a look at the boot manager tomorrow. Think I will follow Mudcrabs advice and make an image of my entire c-disk first. Then I can quickly go back to this if something goes wrong. I really love True Image. It has saved me several times so far. Now the next step is doing all testing in XP2 and have XP1 as the safe system.

So I will do this total backup test if I can get the boot manager to work and test if I can update XP2 with a modified XP1 (like when new software has been added after testing). I use music software where there are a lot of demos, updates etc. some of which are disasters, so you want to test for weeks before accepting something.

Maybe I can find time tomorrow to proceed with this, but I have some work to do first. I have made precise notes of the process so far in order to publish them here.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "XP1 was partition(1) and I set XP2 to partition(2).
" }-
MudCrab, is this unusual for TI 10? The boot.ini of XP2 wasn't altered by TI and it looks like XP1 is still in MBR slot 1.

-{ Quote: "Think I will follow Mudcrabs advice and make an image of my entire c-disk first." }-
Do you mean an image of the whole HD? You have two C: drives now.

I use my second WinXP for testing too. But I didn't copy XP1. I installed WinXP to the second partition and did a basic setup but without a virus program or any of the usual apps. It's not connected to the internet. I imaged this partition and the image is only 700 MB and the partition is 3 GB. So after I have finished testing some software I restore the image and I'm back to a basic WinXP. The restore can be done from XP1 and takes 2 minutes. You don't need to boot to the CD.

[tombuur]

Sorry, I mean the entire Drive 1. It used to be the c-drive with no extra partitions.

I can't have a simple XP2 as you. I have a number of programs working together. A main program (like Cubase) and plugins like drum samplers and all sorts of things. About 16 GB. And that takes longer to restore. But yes, maybe I can restore from Windows when the partition I am using is not affected by the restore. I have just become used to running everything Acronis from disk and in safe mode because I too often have encountered problems when I didn't do it this way.

[MudCrab]

tombuur,

I would be interested in knowing the exact procedure you used to restore the XP1 image to the XP2 partition (from start to finish).

If possible, I would also like to see a screenshot of your partition table for Disk 1 (the Windows Disk).

If your restore resulted in leaving the partition table order as it was and didn't modify the boot.ini file, I'd like to know why. Assuming, of course, that you used TI 10 and not TI 9 build 3,677 to do this.

[Brian K]

tombuur,

If you wanted you could have a basic WinXP like mine, image it and then you could restore either of the two images depending on your requirements. In other words, your second partition could be used to run several different WinXPs.

Images are so useful.

At this stage I suggest you keep an image of XP1 and another of XP2. Keeping an image of XP2 means you don't have to edit the boot.ini of the partition again. I don't use whole HD images.

I'm looking forward to seeing your guide on dual booting. It will help others.

[Brian K]

-{ Quote: "
If your restore resulted in leaving the partition table order as it was and didn't modify the boot.ini file, I'd like to know why. " }-
MudCrab,

Same here. The boot.ini in WinXP2 had to be edited to partition(2). I'll be out of town for a few days so I hope you have an answer before I return. Very interesting.

[tombuur]

Okay, today I tried to setup the Acronis OS Selector, but it did not work. I had XP2 working while I set this up. After that I would only get to XP2 not matter which of the two I chose at start up.

Shall you unhide both for this to work?

I also tried to install another XP2 which works fine (without the boot manager, of course). You basically just follow the last steps of the procedure we have gone through in this thread.

Also I need to know the procedure we went through would have worked if the backups of partitions were restored from another partition on Drive 1. My guess is that it should work.

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "Okay, today I tried to setup the Acronis OS Selector, but it did not work. I had XP2 working while I set this up. After that I would only get to XP2 not matter which of the two I chose at start up." }-
What version and build of TI did you use to backup and restore the partition?

It sounds like you got the menu entry for both XP1 and XP2, but XP1 would not boot. Correct?

Did you install OSS while booted into XP2 or from the DD/OSS CD?

-{ Quote: "Shall you unhide both for this to work?" }-
If installing OSS from the DD/OSS CD, ALL Windows partitions MUST be unhidden when OSS is installed (and even better, another partition marked as Primay [like the OSS partition]). Otherwise, you'll have Windows booting partitions "frozen" in the Hidden state and they won't boot properly. This is due to a bug in OSS and can be fixed by editing the BOOTWIZ.OSS file. See this thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=176064) for details. If you want to attach your BOOTWIZ.OSS file to a post, I'll take a look at it. You'll need to copy the file and rename it to BOOTWIZ.TXT in order to attach it.

-{ Quote: "Also I need to know the procedure we went through would have worked if the backups of partitions were restored from another partition on Drive 1. My guess is that it should work." }-
Yes. The location of the backup file should make no difference. If you have three partitions and your drive (XP1, XP2 and Backups) and the image is stored on Backups, then you can restore the image to XP1 or XP2.

[tombuur]

I made another try, this time with both partitions unhidden. Same result. OSS sends me into XP2 every time. So I guess that is the bug referred to which requires editing of bootwiz etc.

Not sure if I want to get into more of that editing thing of ini files. I think Acronis should have made this work, even in those cases where Microsoft is to blame they should have found some workarounds.

[MudCrab]

When you tried, was the OSS partition the Active partition?

Did you start over from scratch or at least uninstall OSS before trying again?

----

Another thing you can try is this:

OSS not installed
Setup XP1, the partition for XP2 (leave empty) and the OSS partition
Use DD to hide the XP2 partition and set the XP1 partition Active
Boot into XP1, Windows should boot and run correctly
Install DD in Windows, then install OSS from Windows
OSS should reboot and find your XP1 and allow you to boot into it.
Check that the XP2 partition is marked as hidden
Boot to the TI CD and restore XP1 image to XP2 as an Active partition
Reboot to OSS
OSS should find XP2
Check that the settings are correct for XP2 (XP2 partition Active, XP1 partition hidden)
Check that the settings are correct for XP1 (XP1 partition Active, XP2 partition hidden)

[Brian K]

tombuur,

I'm back. Any news about your dual booting?

[tombuur]

Hi, I am at work. Working 12-15 hours these days I have not had time to try the latest suggestion from Mudcrap. I will tomorrow, when I am off work as compensation for the extra hours.

[tombuur]

I have now tried installing OSS from XP1.

If XP2 is hidden there is no way it will boot into this. So I tried to have both unhidden. I could then boot into XP1, but when trying to boot into XP2 (the second option in OSS) I got XP1 again. Now starting DD I can see that the system had hidden XP2. So OSS must do the hiding, but after that won't recognize XP2.

I know I didn't do exactly as suggested by Mudcrab, but I believe the differences are small, so I don't see why it shouldn't work my way.

Basically I am about to give up and just use DD to do the switch even if it isn't that smooth as picking an option at start up.

[MudCrab]

Installing OSS from Windows (or the CD) with both XP partitions unhidden and one of them active will usually cause the "cross-link" bug.

If you want to install OSS with both the Windows partitions unhidden and have it work, you have to do the following:

Uninstall OSS
DO NOT let the computer reboot into Windows until the following is completed
Use DD to unhide both the XP1 and XP2 partitions
Create (if not already created) a small (100MB) Primary FAT32 or NTFS partition for OSS on the same drive as XP1 and XP2
Label the OSS partition "OSS"
Reboot to TI and restore the image to XP2
Reboot to the DD CD and start DD
Set the OSS partition Active and verify all partitions are still unhidden
Reboot to the DD CD and install OSS using the Custom option and selecting the OSS partition as the destination
Upon reboot after installation, OSS should find both XP1 and XP2
Check the Properties for XP1 and make sure XP1 is Active and XP2 is hidden
Check the Properties for XP2 and make sure XP2 is Active and XP1 is hidden
Try booting into both and see if it works


If there are problems, please make a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file, rename it to BOOTWIZ.TXT and attach it to a post.

[tombuur]

Now the OSS works for my dual boot 2 x XP system.

I skipped the step about restoring the image to XP2 since I already had a working XP2 in there. So this whole thing boils down to:

Uninstall OSS
Unhide all partitions
Create a small partition for OSS (100 MB works fine)
Install OSS to that partition

That's it. Well, provided you set up XP1 and XP2 as outlined above.

An added bonus is that the inactive XP becomes visible when using OSS at start up. Hence you can easily move files between the two which could be useful with programs that insist on using "My Files" for saving stuff.

I just need to check my notes on this whole setup a second time, then I will start a new thread with a condensed version of the experience gained here.

[Brian K]

tombuur,

-{ Quote: "An added bonus is that the inactive XP becomes visible when using OSS at start up." }-
Do you mean that both OS are visible at the same time?

Which OS is using C: drive?

What drive letter is the other WinXP using if they are both visible?

I haven't used OSS but I'd expect it to have only one OS visible and that OS would take the C: drive letter.

[tombuur]

The active OS is using C:, the other one uses H: on my system. I guess that will vary. Doesn't seem to cause any trouble. As I mentioned, you can then transfer files between the two. Which, of course, is not a bonus if you want to make 100% sure that things are not mixed up.

[Brian K]

I'll be interested to hear from MudCrab but I doubt OSS is supposed to work that way. Only one OS should be visible in an independent OS setup.

You could hide the other OS by removing its drive letter in Disk Management of the relevant C: drive.

Your situation may have arisen by having both operating systems visible for the OSS setup.

-{ Quote: "If a previously-hidden partition is newly visible when XP boots, it will be recognized and given a new drive letter. Once a partition is visible to XP it is recommended that you do not subsequently try to hide it from XP with a boot manager or PartitionMagic. Instead, use XP's Disk Management snap-in to remove the drive letter if need be." }-

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#05

[tombuur]

Anyway. I have now started a thread with notes on this dual boot XP system.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1130748#post1130748

I can always edit the initial post of that, if we change our minds about how to do this.

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "I'll be interested to hear from MudCrab but I doubt OSS is supposed to work that way. Only one OS should be visible in an independent OS setup." }-
I prefer that the OS partitions be hidden from each other, but it can be done the other way (as it is when you use Microsoft's way). As long as the Windows partition gets the right drive letter, you should be okay.

-{ Quote: "Your situation may have arisen by having both operating systems visible for the OSS setup." }-
The need for the partitions to be visible (unhidden) during the OSS installation is to avoid the "grayed out checkbox" bug. If an OS partition is hidden when you install OSS, OSS "locks" the partition in the Hidden state so it ends up being Hidden and Active and the OS won't boot. Since the checkbox is disabled (grayed out), you can't change it and have to edit the BOOTWIZ.OSS file manually to fix it (easy to do).

The trick is to not boot into either Windows until after you've set the OSS menu entry properties for each one so that the other OS partition is Hidden.

I haven't yet read through tombuur's new post, but will.

[tombuur]

Brian K has pointed out that I forgot the step with unallocated harddisk space. The image I used for XP1/XP2 was backed up during the first setup while I had unallocated space. Maybe that is why it worked with a allocated space too.

[Brian K]

MudCrab,

Thanks. It's clear now.