Booting into 2 installs of XPPro?

Hi
I have 2 hard drives; 60GB (C: with XP Pro) and a blank 20GB. To save a lot of time I would like a copy of the C: drive to be put onto the 20GB drive. It will fit at the moment. Presumably I can do that with TrueImage, make an image of C: and restore it to D:, will that work?

I then want to use OS Selector to choose which OS to boot into and make the other hidden from the system.

In this scenario, do I have to alter the boot.ini file to show 2 OSs as both drives will have the same boot.ini file i.e showing only 1 OS?

Is the above the best way to achieve what I want? Is there anything I should be aware of? BIOS settings etc.?
Thanks in advance.
John

 

I am getting nowhere with this. I have installed two installs of XP pro on 2 different hard drives. OS Selector is on one and activated. Two OS are shown in the Selector window and booting from either icon puts me into the same OS everytime.

Clicking on either icon states I am trying to boot the OS I am already using, I know that. If I can only get the OS to boot I want, I want the other one to be hidden from the system.

Any ideas please?
Thanks

PS Could the BIOS settings have anything to do with this problem or does the OSS override BIOS settings?

 

Totally frustrated with OS Selector so I have removed it from my PC. So far a waste of money. Pity.
John

 

Same setup, do not have OS selector - I'd guess it's really only needed for a heterogeous selection of OS's. My Boot.ini file looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=8
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" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Backup on D:" /fastdetect

The easy way to get to that is Start>Control Panel>System>Advanced tab>Select Settings in Startup and Recovery box>Edit and save your changes. Make changes cautiously if you haven't done this type of thing before. If you did a complete replication of the C: drive, you should only have to change the rdisk value after copying the line covering your main partition. Also change the desciption as above so you know which you are loading. If you unsure of the rdisk and partition values, just bring up Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Storage>Disk Management - it's pretty obvious from there.

You can also get at boot.ini directly from Explorer, but you will generally need to uncheck the box entitled "Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended)" under Tools>Folder Options>View (followed by a page down).

As always, be very careful. When I did this, I simply performed a clean install of XP Pro to the second disk since I just wanted a minimal boot environment in the event I really munged something on my main boot partition. I also use this secondary partition for initial testing of new programs.

Blue

 

Thanks Blue but I have been down that road of suggestions. But thanks anyway. My reason for using OS Selector was to hide the OS not booted but without success. Has anyone got OSS to work as it you want it to?

Now I am using the Boot Popup Menu in the BIOS which gives me a choice to boot from all the storage devices in the PC. I can boot into either of the 2 OSs fine but of course the other one is still available to me.
Cheers
John

 

Hello John,

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

The problem of multibooting is really complicated. Please contact support@acronis.com regarding it and write that you want to contact me (Andrew Berezovsky). You can also send me a private message with your email address and I will contact you soon with diagnostic instructions.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Thank you for your repsonse Andrew and I have sent you an email.
John