dual boot vista/xp: nearly there, but not quite: oss doesn't recognize xp !

with help in this tread https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=192957#14

I have made great progress, but...I am afraid I have to turn for help again.

I am still trying to create a dual booting notebook with vista and xp. The finish line seems in sight, but i cannot reach it yet. The vista is HP-OEM, the HD is sata.

With help from MudCrab I have been able to make to make OSS recognize oem-vista and went on to install xp, according to his instructions in the tread above above

The installation of xp proved very difficult, partly as expected because xp does not recognize the sata HD. Nlite (www.nliteos.com) brought help.
Additional problems arose with my xp cd’s and product keys. I have a dell oem xp sp1 CD with key and generic upgrade xp sp2 cd (a student version) with key. I didn’t want to use the dell cd because it is sp1 and because have experienced in the past that it would not boot other than dell pc’s. I guess it checks the bios for that. So I used to the upgrade (during the several installation attempts it sometimes asked for a xphome or win2K cd, but not always) cd and worked it with nlite. The installation failed at the point where the product key needs to be entered:unvalid. I used both the cd’s own key and the dell key. I got a generic oem xp sp2 cd from my dealer, worked it with nlite again and used my dell key: finally BINGO.

I have reformatted the partition intended for xp between each attempt. In between I reactivated oss once and noted that is had marked my xp installation attempts as an “unknown operating system”.

After the xp installation finally worked, I reactivated oss and found 2 “unknown operating systems” ! (next to vista). Before reactivating oss, I noted that, when I boot into xp, I have the choice between 2 “windows xp professional”. At different times, I have either not made a choice or choose the top one.

When in oss, i try to boot the unknown operating system (2), it fails and says that the file system of the operating system is not supported. The properties are as follows:

boot configuration: write the boot sector is ticked, the other items are not. (In the vista operation system properties, the write boot sector item is not ticked)

partitions:
vista (#1-1), not active, hidden
oss (#1-3), not active, not hidden
acronis sz (#1-5) active is grayed, not hidden
local disk (#1-2) avtive, not hidden, both tick boxes are grayed (i suppose my xp is here)
all are ntfs, except for acronis sz, which is fat32
note: there is no (#1-4)

the other menu items: folders and files have nothing to display

DD in manual mode reports the following:
vista primary, hidden
ntfs (c primary, active
oss (d primary
acronis sz



any suggestions ?, many thanks in advance, Luc

 

The normal procedure to try first would be:

• Deactivate OSS (don't uninstall)
• Boot to DD and set the XP partition Active and hide all the other partitions
• Boot to the XP CD and install XP (have it format the XP partition)
• Let the XP installation continue and make sure you can successfully reboot into XP
• Install DD and OSS in XP, if wanted, otherwise, reactivate OSS from the DD CD (see **Note below)
• OSS should find XP and setup the menu entry for it.

-----

You can't mix OEM and Retail keys. If possible, I would just use the OEM XP SP2 CD and your Dell key.

I would suggest you delete the OSS "unknown" entry that does not boot XP and leave the other one. You can then "fix" it so that it's correct.

**Note: You may need to edit the boot.ini file to remove the second XP boot menu option. If you do, do this BEFORE you reactivate OSS.

If this doesn't work, can you attach the BOOTWIZ.OSS and BOOT.INI files?

 

Dear MudCrab,
Thank you very much for your quick reply and help. I had gone through most of your suggested normal procedure, before my previous post. I did 1) through 4). I didn’t dare 5a) since I’m afraid installing DD and OSS again in XP would overide the painful editing of bootwiz.oss I did before, with your guiding, to make OSS discover Vista.
5 b) went fine, XP now starts immediately, without prompting me to choose which XP I want
After 5c) OSS even showed a 3rd unknow OS. I used the OS detection wizard and I came up with a 4th one… OSS clearly doesn’t find XP. I have deleted all unknown OS’s but one.
I have looked at other posts where you suggest to change bootwiz.oss to make OSS discover XP, but my files seem rather different, at least to me. I’m attaching them…
Thanks again for your help !

Luc

The normal procedure to try first would be:
1)Deactivate OSS (don't uninstall)
2)Boot to DD and set the XP partition Active and hide all the other partitions
3)Boot to the XP CD and install XP (have it format the XP partition)
4)Let the XP installation continue and make sure you can successfully reboot into XP
5 a)Install DD and OSS in XP, if wanted, otherwise,
5 b) You may need to edit the boot.ini file to remove the second XP boot menu option. If you do, do this BEFORE you reactivate OSS
5 c) reactivate OSS from the DD CD (see **Note below)
OSS should find XP and setup the menu entry for it.
--

 

I think you're almost there. Try making the following changes to the XP entry in the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and see if it helps.

Original:

Code:

		<id2307471177 boot_as_ms71="0" boot_as_os2="0" boot_cd_entry="0" boot_partition="2691248982" bootname="bootsect.sys" icon="icon_sys_unknown" language="" lba="0" name_template="%n%l %l(%ll%l)" nthide="0" os_type="unknown" use_manual_disks_order="0" write_boot="1">
			<partitions>
				<id2258396320 hidden="1" />
				<id2691248982 active="1" />
			</partitions>
		</id2307471177>

Change first line to this (changes in red):

Code:

		<id2307471177 boot_as_ms71="0" boot_as_os2="0" boot_cd_entry="0" boot_partition="2691248982" bootname="bootsect.sys" icon="[COLOR="red"]icon_sys_win[/COLOR]" language="[COLOR="red"]english[/COLOR]" lba="[COLOR="red"]1[/COLOR]" [COLOR="red"]multi="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS"[/COLOR] name_template="[COLOR="red"]Windows XP[/COLOR]" nthide="0" os_type="[COLOR="red"]ntxp[/COLOR]" use_manual_disks_order="0" write_boot="1">