Boot Question

I have 2 separate physical drives. I want the computer to ask me during start-up which drive to boot from. How do I do this? Running Win 7/64.

TIA

 

well the crude way to do it could be from the bios options.
or you could use a 3rd party boot-loader.

windows 7 has its own boot-loader btw as well whats the 2nd os your using ?

 

I have been hoping to avoid "The crude way". I would like to see an option at start up. There is a spinner and an SSD.

 

Then you cannot boot to it so not sure what you are looking for.

You can only boot to a second drive, if the second drive has an operating system, of some sort, on it.

You need to define in greater detail what is on both drives (in terms of operating systems) and what it is you really want to do.

Also, "spinner" is not a common computer term (at least not for hardware) so I have no clue what you mean by that.

 

Hello Bill.....By spinner I mean conventional hard drive. The hard drive and the SSD are running Win 7/64. When installing the SSD I reinstalled Windows and started over. I kept the HD as is. I would like a quick way to boot into one or the other.

 

I am still not sure where we are here. Are you saying you installed Windows 7 on the hard drive, then you installed the same Windows 7 using the same license and key code on the SSD? Not sure that is legal for one. Have you changed the boot order in the BIOS?

 

This should at least get you started: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserver2008appcompatabilityandcertification/thread/076fcb7b-6575-4f41-963f-4dc84fffdb29/

 

why would anyone want to keep the old install of win7 and or twin win7 installs.
I don't get it.
you have the install cd and all that so just format the windows files you don't want to keep on the other os spiner drive as you like to call it.

its what id do.
if anything id put winxp pro on the 2nd drive and keep linux mint 13 on a dvd near by.
thing work 100% on the live boot topic, and that part about it owns.

sucks bad that even now windows can do that.

 

lol And I'd have to say, why would anyone still use Windows XP? It was designed over 12 years ago to support legacy hardware and software from the DOS era, 10 years before that. And it was designed when security was an afterthought, before the explosion of high-speed Internet access, and at a time when NO ONE, not even the Microsoft bashers of the time, could predict the proliferation of the badguys.

Windows 7 was designed with security first to support current and future hardware and software.

XP, even as good as it became (with SP3) needs to retire. Then all of us will be safer.

 

as far as im censored no windows os is setup with security in mind, its just not a concept that computes with micro $oft.

and as for winxp and hackers well..... knowing how to work the Os is a double edged sword, you can use it to lock down your os and work it the way you want or others can too.
its just a mater of who gets their first

just like opensorce software, everyone knows everything about whats up and yet because everyone douse Linux blows windows away on the security topic.
i wonder why

you want network security ? im in windows xp atm and i have a total of 4 open listen ports and only 3 allowed to be used past the network firewalls ? how can you hack something with a tcp\ip packet when theirs nothing to connect to ?

win98se only had 3 open ports by dealt. and before everything was said and done with win98se something nice happened UNOFFICIAL Windows98 Second Edition Service Pack 2.1a

something i would like to add that should be done with winxp seeing as its all most abandonware.
haxor sp4 for winxp pro plz {64gig ram support and directx10} hemmm that be tasty.
and yes i know a 32bit os cant really fully understand more then 4 gigs at any given time.

and last but not least true winxp is not the same as emulated xp in win7 ultra

btw how meny open ports do you have their in your network stack atm in win7 ? 46 ? lol that's 46 possible attack vectors vs my 4

 

First, please use a spelling checker. Not all readers speak English as their first language, and even many of us that do, have a hard time understanding all of todays shorthand speak. I recommend Speckie for IE users.

Well, then I am sorry, but it would appear you've been misinformed and don't have an understanding of today's Microsoft or Windows 7. It is actually pretty darn hard to infect an updated Windows 7 system when left at default settings. And don't think for a second Linux (or Mac) users are immune to compromise.

I recommend you do some reading on the topic - and don't listen biased sources.

To get started in fact, note Kaspersky Labs - not normally a fan of Microsoft products - made it a point to point out in their most recent IT Threat Evolution Analysis, Q3 2012,

I would also recommend you subscribe to the Department of Homeland Security's US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin Vulnerability Summaries and see what new is reported every week and was reported back through the archives. Note the Adobe products (typically the worse), FF (the worse browser), Chrome (getting better but still behind), Apple products and Linux too - then compare them to MS products, in particular W7 and IE9 (and IE8 for XP users) - which continues to rate tops in browser security by major independent labs, like NSS Labs.

I am not bragging on Microsoft. I am just saying that Microsoft is sick and tired of unjust bashing (especially by the biased IT media and the ill-informed) for poor security when it was the badguys that put us here, not MS. So Microsoft changed focus and with Windows 7 and IE put security first. And it has paid off, not only with Windows 7 (especially 64-bit) and IE8/9, but with the free and capable MSE too. Even Windows own basic Windows Firewall if fully capable and on par (while often easier on resources) with the competition.

Are Microsoft products bullet proof? Of course not. But if left on their own - that is, if allowed to automatically keep updated (and the refined Windows Updates in Windows 7 and W8 is fine to set to full automatic) and if the user, the weakest link does not take the computer where it should not go, it is pretty darn bullet resistant.

 

good grief

 

I am afraid that's how I feel about constant false claims. Like election commercials - they get pretty old.

 

Coincidently, I just got this weeks Dept of Homeland Security US-CERT's Vulnerability Summary and once again, Adobe leads the pack. Looks like Chrome got hit too.

Since not all vulnerabilities are reported each week, it is important to view the summaries running over the last 6 - 8 weeks to get, and keep a running picture of the current security situation.

 

OoOooOOps did a hit a nerve or something,you just know this is going to be good.

Lol did the topic get to adult\off topic for ya Rainwalker ? Sorry about that.
will get right back on topic the min you can add more info about what it is your asking of us rain ~ and perhaps answer the question as to why you need to keep the old os in the first place

But man what bill bright posted is just so temping to respond to i just have to

Ah the grammar police trump card, ya i know sorry about that.
Its a bad habit from using real time chat so much over the years in online games and other places,i type faster then a professional typist {WPM wise}but sadly what i pump out is slop if i dont check what i have typed after the fact and just slap the submit reply thingy.

When i do get in to pro mode i use a full word processors program.
As for IE8 for winxp ill pass and if it were my call id uninstall it but as you know i can't.
Sadly the anti trust vs US micro $oft case of old never did work out in the long run as we all know at this point,the hole case came down to what is a operating system vs what is a application.
If that topic had worked out micro $oft would have bin chopped in two, one grope would only be allowed to make applications and the other would only work on the Os.
That hole topic exploded in the old internet explorer stink years.

As we know Linux went to one extrema on this topic and micro soft did the reverse,sadly micro $oft argument that won the case is sound,its kind of a gray zone as to what is a Os and what is a application when you really think about it.
Popular topics for windows over the years to mix it up seem to have bin windows messenger,media player,browser,firewall,anti-virus software just to name a feu all of witch more or less suck imho.
Though i will install IE8 on xp only because it acts like a patch for the Os seeing as its integrated so deeply in the os.

you'll have to forgive me but i tend to be a man from the people for the people that try's to best represent the best wishes of the people and not micro $oft or other big corporate interests.

And win7 looks infected loads from were im standing,and that's the tip of the ice berg, nm the fact the one of the first things anyone should do with win7 when first installing it is disable 50% of all the services as well as choke as much of the integrated spy-ware as possible and why o why douse everything look like a web browser on that Os ?
Never mind i understand now with the sink of cloud computing in the air years after win7 came out.
PS the GUI blows in win7 too.
infestation link

Then don't use propaganda from home land security or Norton or NSS labs mr micro $oft most valuable professional.
I see you chose to only use US sources vs independent International sources as i would have Bill_Bright info

~ Removed Copyrighted Image - see Security and Vulnerabilities ~
Source wiki~secunia wiki source
Further reading.
{1} {2} {3}

Yaaa ok ill start using IE8 for xp right away "ps activeX is killed on the hardware firewall side among other places.
and im not interested in anything home land security has to say about anything {waves little Canadian flag} were all well aware about what their about in Canada and imho they should be disbanded and are not needed.

If you say so Mr micro $oft most valuable professional no disrespect intended.

Ya your probably right.... if left all on default settings win7 is more or less a remote administration Os for micro $oft and friends so your probably right,and agreed on the flash player topic.

Its seems bill we are on opposite sides of the equation on many topics,i look forward to more amusing debates with you in the future.
don't forget to rub Richard stallman belly on your way out for good luck,have a nice day

 

This is really sad. I would debate but its been demonstrated you don't know and more importantly, don't care to verify your facts.

The Dept of Homeland's US-CERT spews propaganda and is not independent? Yeah right. Frankly, I find that offensive but will set that aside, except to say with such ridiculous comments to support an argument, debating you is a fool's errand.

Obviously there was no attempt to determine how the US-CERT gets or reports its data. Same with NSS Labs.

Only US sources? Kaspersky was founded and is headquartered in Moscow, Russia! And it is currently operating in and gathering data from users in almost 200 countries and territories around the globe.

Your official source? A Wikipedia page! Really? Wikipedia? lol. And guess where Wikipedia is from? San Francisco. That is in the United States - the country where, for some reason you feel no valid information comes from, unless it is in a Wiki document that just about anyone can edit.

SecurityFocus is Symantec (the parent company of Norton) - hardly known for being a Microsoft supporter. That is what makes the Kaspersky report so remarkable. The kilvolhof link is hardly current and cites no references, methods, or procedures and is clearly biased as seen in EVERY comment. And the h-online link? It shows a problem with XP SP3 running IE7 and IE8. Hardly representative of Microsoft products today.

Can you find current examples of vulnerabilities with MS products? Sure. Subscribe the US-CERTs summaries and you will see them. Is Microsoft the quickest when it comes to patching newly discovered vulnerabilities? No. And that IS a problem. But they are working on that too.

Propaganda from Home Land Security? That still amazes and disgusts me. BTW, Mozilla is out of Mountain View, California - just down the road from Google HQ.

Norton? I did not cite anything from Norton - YOU DID!!! (Symantec = Norton). And sadly, it is clear you don't know anything about the MS-MVP program, or me. I will defend any company unjustly bashed - check out my posts on Intel and AMD CPU warranties. MS is just a bigger target so unjust bashing of MS gets more attention.

To be sure, Microsoft has done plenty in the past to deserve bashing and I've done my share - especially for some of their marketing and "outreach" strategies. And there is still plenty of room for improvements in security. But it is important to remember that the vast majority of the 100s of millions of Windows users run at the default settings and are NOT infected.

 

Rainwalker, I am not that familiar with your particular problem but perhaps using the Windows boot manager is the option ?

Windows startup process: -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_startup_process-

That may be enough to get you started.

Also, -http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/108539-how-do-i-create-select-boot-2-hard-drives.html-

Bill, you always state that it's so important to post correct info - not just for the OP but for reference purposes.

There are many who would disagree with your opinion that Windows 7 was designed with 'security first' ! There are just too many issues to get into the details. One question could be - security for whom ?

For a Windows product, Win XP is just fine. Why should everyone who currently uses that OS drop it because you think it needs to retire ?
It can be reasonably safe - for a Windows product - if configured correctly.
For the purpose of browsing the internet I prefer Win XP over Win 7.

Perhaps Windows 7 is harder to infect just out-of-the box than Win XP. But just that.

The Department of Homeland Security as an objective and independent source ? Just like the TSA ?

 

Thanks Fly

 

I do and I agree. Are you saying the references I posted are wrong? Please point out where.

Note I post references to support what I am saying because I don't expect everyone to just accept my word. So why should I, we, automatically accept someone else's without some sort of corroborating evidence from unbiased sources.

So you agree with Sir paranoids and feel the US Government and the Russians at Kaspersky have conspired to make Microsoft look good?

You criticize my source but offer nothing but some comparison to TSA (a totally unrelated agency) as reason to discredit mine - and we are just supposed to take your word, because you say so? I don't understand that. Did you check out US-CERT to see if legit? To learn where it gets the information? And what those Summaries indicate? I don't think so.

Objective? Yeah, because the US Government wants Microsoft to succeed and Google to fail.

Kinda the whole point of this conversation, don't you think?

Ummm For everyone! Since many, if not most compromised machines are drafted into bot armies then used to send spam, malware or as zombies in DDoS attacks, things that affect all of us, a more secure system is better security for everyone, not just the user or users of that computer.

Window 7 and Windows 8 are by no means perfect. And never will be. And I have nothing against XP, but like the Windows versions before it, XP is obsolete. It does not support much of today's hardware nor does it address today's security threat any more than a car from the 60s can be be as safe as a car from today. Even if well-maintained and driven safely, defensively.

And since the user is the weakest link, so too can it be the strongest so yes, a diligent user can safely secure XP. No doubt. I never was infected with XP, and I used XP until 7 came out, skipping Vista. But you still cannot purposefully visit places where illegal activity takes places (like illegal filesharing, gambling or porn), where badguys often launch their new (perhaps zero-day) exploits, and not expect compromise. It is hard to stop a badguy if you invite him in.

And by the way - I worked and lived InfoSec for nearly 40 years - at a level where I could, and likely would go to jail, or at least be fired if I failed at my job. That does NOT, in any way, make me an expert, but it does mean, in THIS case, I might have some training and experience to know what is better for the many that is not just from a computer enthusiast's point of view. I was there (working in this industry) when the corporate world demanded legacy support for less secure hard and software in XP (so they would not have to go through expensive retooling of all their office hardware and software - again, as they did going from DOS to Windows). I was there when Congress and the EU told Microsoft they could not include an AV in XP - because Norton and McAfee cried "monopoly" and were (supposedly) going to rid the world of Malware. And I was there when MS then got blamed because badguys exploited holes caused (in part) by that legacy support and by the anti-malware makers failure to rid the world malware as they promised.

Sadly, like many obsolete but still perfectly good technologies before it, XP's time has passed and it needs to be put on the shelve, along with CRT monitors, floppy drives, DOS, Windows 95/98, ATA-drives, CD Drives, 32-bit, old analog TVs and 3-wheeled ATVs.

Also, please note Fly, the comment I originally objected to is this, "as far as im censored no windows os is setup with security in mind, its just not a concept that computes with micro $oft." That of course, is not true, or the vast majority, by a large percentage of the nearly 1 Billion Windows users out there would be infected. And it is the opposite of that and clearly the majority of users are not trained, self-trained, or self-claimed security experts.

Microsoft has every reason - including "corporate greed" - to put security first because they know bashers will blame them anyway, as they have for over a decade. So, they have done something about it, with "free" MSE, IE9 and Windows 7.

McAfee, AVG, ZoneLabs, Symantec TrendMicro and the other anti-malware program makers have ZERO incentive to rid the world of Malware. In fact, they need malware to thrive to survive. And yet Kaspersky, a major anti-malware provider and security analyst reports no Microsoft products made the top ten list of worst offenders, and you discard that based on what? Oh yeah, a Russian/US conspiracy to hide the truth.

 

Sorry Rainwalker - for my part in your thread going a bit OT.

 

Bill,

There is no way I will engage in a point-counterpoint type of discussion with you.

Aside from other things, it's just too much.

Bill, you ascribe views and opinions to me that I just don't have.

Why don't you put your considerable expertise at better use

Let's get back to Rainwalker's thread.

 

I was wondering when things, if ever, would return to topic......what a ride

 

It's an interesting conversation and I think it should be split into another topic because its' clearly off topic for this one.

I think using the DOHS as a source makes sense, but I think vulnerability statistics are virtually useless.

The question of what Windows is designed for, for me, is simple. Windows is and will always be designed with one thing in mind: backwards compatibility.

Backwards compatibility and security do not mix. It's the reason why Windows 8 still has the same DEP, SEHOP, and ASLR policies of Vista/7. DEP is over a decade old, why is it still Opt In? Because legacy programs aren't compiled with the latest VS so they may not be compatible and that small chance of incompatibility is greater than enabling an ancient technique that would prevent the vast majority of attacks in the wild.[source]

I agree that XP is ancient and out of date - the policy enforcement is lame, the user model is virtually useless, and there's no SEHOP/ASLR.

Where Vista and 7 improved things is by implementing a user model and token system that wasn't useless. In terms of them prioritizing security, hardly. Default compiler flags for VS have done 100x as much for security.

Windows will never create an operating system that prioritizes security above backwards compatibility. They will always be held back by this. It's why they created EMET - because they're completely afraid to change the policies themselves so they release a tool that lets people do it themselves.

The success of Windows is what holds it back. OSX can implement new security features all it likes (app store, application sandboxing models) - it doesn't have a large business sector to worry about or even that huge a user base, same goes for Linux. It also doesn't have to worry about new developers because the developer base (while large on OSX) is not nearly as large as Windows.

There are quite a few things MS puts above security besides backwards compatibility but that's the one that'll never change. They do have the incentive - getting hacked is bad for business, and this has truly shown in Windows Vista/7/8. It's just not the number one priority by any means.

Unrelated, the TSA is an agency of the DOHS.

 

I have done this before. It is handy when somehow one copy of Windows becomes unbootable. You can still launch the other Windows and then go about repairing the unbootable Windows.

 

Ummm, so? The US Coast Guard, Secret Service, FEMA, US-CERT, Immigration, Border Patrol and more all fall under DoHS. That does not mean failure or the incompetence in one agency implies problems in sibling agencies. DoHS was established to create and maintain communications between the various agencies so we don't have one agency sitting on information another agency needs to prevent an attack, like another 9/11.

That is exactly right! Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

Understand supporting legacy protocols is not Microsoft's desire but rather demanded by Microsoft's massive user base. Microsoft is stuck between a rock and hard space to support potentially less secure legacy hardware and software, new hardware and software and maintain security no matter how careless, reckless and naive its user may be.

If Windows does not support legacy hardware and software, MS gets blamed. If Windows does not support new hardware or software, MS gets blamed. If Norton and McAfee fail to block malware, MS gets blamed.

So Microsoft decided getting blamed for not supporting legacy products was better than getting blamed for a security breach caused by badguys.

Sorry. But they already did. That's exactly why Virtual XP Mode in some versions of Windows 7 was created, and why the Upgrade advisors were created.

If you check back about 3 years to when W7 came out, you will see 1000s of forum posts about people trying to upgrade their legacy XP systems to Windows 7 and not being successful because the hardware makers did not create new drivers, or the program developers failed to created updated and compatible versions of their programs.