How to dual boot 2 XP's?

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.

 

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:


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:


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.

 

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.

 

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)

 

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?

 

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.

 

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?

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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?

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 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.

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.

 

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.

 

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)

 

tombuur,

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

tombuur,

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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