Easy explanation for multiple OSes

I've got a desktop machine that has XP Pro on it. Works great. The hard drive is so large that I thought I would use some of the excess space to put other partitions on it with XP Pro from my other systems. (Allows me to get rid of a few boxes--a good thing in a shrinking office.)

So, I purchased Disk Director Suite 10.0, and I copied the single partition from the other machine (the one I want to get rid of) to my main desktop. No problem. I made sure that when I copied over the partition that I marked it as a Primary.

Rebooted, and all looked fine. I could still boot to my original XP Pro. Time to try to boot to the newly copied partition (which also includes XP Pro). So, I installed OS Selector, and it saw both the original XP Pro partition and the new XP Pro partition.

I get the OS Selector boot menu, and I can select the original XP Pro partition, and booting works fine.

If I select the new XP Pro partion, XP starts to boot, but then the original XP Pro partition comes up.

Why?

It may have something to do with the differences between the two installs of XP Pro (different hardware, that sort of thing), but if that is the case, how do I make the new partition truly bootable so that I can really use it?

I've read the Disk Director Suite 10.0 manual from cover to cover (all 129 pages) and there is nothing that addresses this. Is there something online? If I ever get this second XP Pro up and running, I've got about three more I would love to install in the same system.

-Allen

 

Might be the boot.ini file of 2nd XP that mixes-up OSS: even though OSS loads the 2nd ntloader, if its boot.ini still points to partition #1, it will boot that partition's XP.
One way would be to edit that boot.ini (put partition(2) instead of partition(1)).

Be carefull that OSS doesn't use a saved version of boot.ini that it keeps in the hidden Bootwiz folder. One way to avoid this is to reboot, and in OSS menu go and edit the preferences for that second XP; eg in the Files section, you can see the boot.ini among others, and you can edit it there.
While you're there, make sure OSS forces that 2nd partition to be active when loading it. Read manual for how to do this (section 7.7, in particular 7.7.6).

Also, since this is a rather simple dual-boot configuration, you can avoid using OSS altogether and only use the ntloader by adding a proper line to the first XP's boot.ini file.
If initially you have something like, ie assuming that your WinXP's are in the first and second primary partitions of your drive:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP 1"

you can change it to get:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP 1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="WinXP 2"

You will then have a choice between the two XP install. If you do this though, you should then delete the 2nd XP's boot.ini (or rather rename to boot.ini.backup)

Note: the WINDOWS="Any name here" portion can be given any text in the quotes; it's used to give the boot menu a simple way to name your different OS's.