Installing New OS's with Acronis OS Selector

I am setting up my system again. I want three separate bootable partitions all running windows xp pro.

When I used OS Selector before, I installed it overtop of a Windows XP multiboot. It worked great for awhile and then stopped working. It would give errors and then disable itself, leaving me able to only boot into the first hdd.

What is the optimal order of installing os's and partitions when starting from scratch.

ie. Install First Windows XP partition. Then Install OS Selector, then Install 2nd XP Partition, then Install 3rd XP Partition.

 

So I installed OS Selector. It found my first partition. I then restarted. It did not find my other partition that I had extracted from an image of the first partition. The are NO FREAKING OPTIONS IN THIS STUPID PROGRAM to add any other operating systems, it seems to be at it's own whim and fancy. I checked my other hdd and OS Selector recognized that it had an active partition, but that's all.

I then unhooked HDD1, and deleted the partition and re-installed on HDD2.
After completing installation, I hooked HDD1 back up. It boots fine, but OS Selector does not acknowledge the bootability of HDD 2.

FRUSTRATING!!

 

So I added the 2nd partition to boot.ini... Acronis OS Selector saw it and set it up as an option. However, when I select it, it still boots into the first partition of the first hard drive. !!!

 

I bought OSS to help with a dual boot system but could not get it to work. Acronis told me it would not work as I had already installed 2 OSs before installing OSS. So I bought OSLoader and that works just fine. It can hide OSs not booted into if required.
HTH
John

 

Hello jeff,
Hello John,

Let me describe the procedure how to install the second copy of Windows to the second HDD (requires Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0).

Situation: You have Windows operating system running on the first HDD and Acronis Disk Director Suite with Acronis OS Selector installed. Your "boot.ini" file looks like shown below:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

You want to have a second copy of this operating system on your second HDD.

Solution:
- Please run Disk Director from Acronis OS Selector boot menu and copy your system partition from your first HDD to your second HDD.
- After that please shut down your computer and disconnect the first HDD. Then please boot your computer from the second HDD and let this copy of Windows to boot up. Please shut down the computer again.
- Please connect your first HDD to the computer and boot it up from this first HDD into Acronis OS Selector boot menu.
- Please open the "boot.ini" file (in the operating system properties) and modify it in the following way:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (second copy)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

- Please reboot your computer. Now you should be able to choose between these two Windows installations and they should work correctly.

Thank you.

--
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Thank you for that explanation Andrew. What that will do though is boot into a DOS window and give me the option there of choosing which OS I want. Correct? I wanted to use OS Selector to do all the work for me and hide the OS not being used. In my case that has not been possible.
Thank you anyway.
John

 

Hello John,

I do remember your case with two separate Windows installations and I will continue to ask our Development Team to investigate this issue.

Thank you.

--
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Thank you Andrew. I appreciate that.
Regards
John

 

I just bought True Image and Disk Director about a week ago. I was hoping to install (3) separate copies of Windows XP Home Ed on my system on Disk 0 (Master Hard Drive), by imaging the 1st partition, a 10GB partition, which was Drive C, which contained a clean install of Windows XP Home Ed (using True Image) and copying it on a 2nd, and 3rd Primary Partition. But realized something went wrong, after trying to boot from the 2nd Primary Partition, an error would come up "NTLDR missing" . So, of course, I had to use the Disk Director rescue CD in order change the active partition to the 1st primary partition, and I was able to successfully boot unto Windows XP that I had originally copied from I realized that maybe the 2nd copy didnt work because the MBR was probably screwed up since the partition wasn't exactly at the same location. Although, I thought I read in the manual that it was possible although not recommended. But it didn't go into any specific details on how to do it.


Now I thought this thread could help me, but I realized that it only applies if one wants to multiboot OSes but with each OS (by itself) occupying on its own physical hard disk.

I know Disk Director can multiboot and install several OSes within a single primary or logical partition. It's ability to do this is because it saves system folders separately for each operating system in order to prevent corruption and conflicts, and I believe if I understand correctly, it rewrites the boot code for each duplicated OS. (However, I don't really understand how this works, so forgive me if I'm incorrect)

Anyway, I have (2) Internal Hard drives (80GB) each. I would like to create three separate primary partitions on physical Disk 0 (Master drive), and have Windows XP installed or copied on each partition. I'm not sure if copying an OS unto another partition will work as I've learned. But maybe someone knows how it can be done. Maybe the way I went about imaging the bootable partition was incorrect. I was hoping that copying a primary partition with a bootable OS would eliminate the need and an enormous amount of time of installing multiple copies of an OS by traditional means (i.e. using the Windows Install CD, then installing drivers, then installing programs, etc). I've learned that the copying function is really useful for logical partitions (data partitions), or for backing up an OS partition. For example, making a copy of bootable primary partition unto another partition, yet not boot the OS from that location. It would just be a copy sitting there for safekeeping. (i.e. making a copy of an OS, just before trying out a program or installing a major Microsoft update).

The 2nd drive (slave drive) is where I'll keep all my data which I will then back up periodically by imaging with Acronis True Image. I would appreciate if someone could write a step by step process of what I would have to do to make this work. Hopefully the OS Selector can allow me to choose which OS to boot from since I like its user friendly GUI.

Your help is greatly appreciated !

 

cloning xp is tricky at best, you should at least 'hide' a partition before installing and booting another partition, there are also some issues with xp (or installing any other os for that matter) on a second harddisk (see here http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/multiboo.htm#top )

xp and 2k have one nasty characteristic, they MAY SEE DRIVES you already 'hid' from view! (although i've had more troubles with 2k than xp, to be honest)

 

Acronis OS-Selector does not work properly. It may or may not recognize operating systems. The automatic 'sensing' of operating systems does not work.

And there is no 'manual' way to make it recognize operating systems. It's a pretty useless product at the moment. I have a setup with 3 primary partitions all with a (supported) operating system on it and a logical partition with a (supported) operating system.

only the first active primary partition with windows xp is recognized properly. all other operating systems not or not properly.

I've been in contact with Acronis about this product for over 2 months now and the Acronis people are polite and helpful, but the product just doesn't work. On questions about 'manual' tweaking i get no answer. Updates of the product show no improvement.

i think i have to start searching for another boot-manager. i wanted to use this product, because the intial boot-screen looks slick and cool. but as said it's not working.

kite

 

i think i have the same problem.

hdd1 with 3 prim. partitions
- win xp for regular work
- win xp for gaming
- win xp for testing software, software-develop etc.

hdd1 and hdd2 with some extended partitions for my documents ...

until today i had a small tool (completly in mbr) that was able to switch 1 of the 3 prim. part. to active and hide the other 2. also some ext. part where hide - for example my gaming system has no acces zo my documnts-partition - and so on.

today i bought os selector because it has a much more pretty userinterface (very good for my wife and child, okay for me too) - but i can not get it work like my old bootmanager. some prim. part. do not get unhide (ghostet button) or kernal was not found and so on.

i can not believe what i read above. it is not possible that only one prim. part. is active at a time and the other where automatically hidden - so that one os can not see the other?

if this it's true - the product will not be usefull for me in any kind - and i gave my money away for nothing.

i cannt believe

 

I have the same problem as many above.

On a single hard drive (250Gb) I've like to set up the following OSs

- Development work (XP Pro)
- Gaming (XP Pro)
- General access (for anyone else to use) (XP Pro)

There doesn't seem to be anyway of doing this.

The advice from Acornis seems to be that I need separate hdd for each of these - wierd!

I did have this working with a previous version of OS Selector by installing Win95 (I think) and keeping this OS viewable to all the others (OS Selctor stored all its files in this partition and XP didn't mess up the MBR due to Win95 being there first - can't remember all the details). However, this was messy and I would have expected the current version to be more slick.

I think calling a product OS Selector is cheeky as it doesn't do that for the most common OS around.

MB

 

My 2 OSs are on different harddrives and OS Selector still does not detect both. I had to buy another application to do what I wanted.
John

 

The way I got it to work, was...

I have 2 partitions with xp on both. One is hidden the other boots. When you are in windows, Install Disk director and make sure not to install os selector. Then reboot the computer. when it is back up. Open disk director and unhide the
os's you want to boot from. (sounds bad, but dont worry). Then run a repair install of disk director and install the os selector. The computer will reboot and all of your os's should show up in acronis selector. Reconfigure it to hide partitions and you are back in business. This is the only way i could get it to properly recognize all of my different os's.

 

Thank you for that Spud. It's good to know that someone has got OSS to work as it should. I use OSLoader ATM so I will stay with that now until Acronis actually fixes my problem. It is surprising that Acronis have not produced a solution for this as yet.
Thanks again.
John