OS Selector problems

I have two drives one with XP and the other with XP-64. Both will boot fine by changing the hard drive boot order in the bios. When I install the OS selector the menu sees both but when I boot XP i get a blank screen and when i boot

 

I have two drives one with XP and the other with XP-64. Both will boot fine by changing the hard drive boot order in the bios. When I install the OS selector the menu sees both but when I boot XP i get a blank screen and when i boot XP-64 it says I have a problem with my APIC config? If I disable the menu everything works ok.

 

Hello Bigjohn,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Multiboot Managing Software.

Could you please describe under which operating system you installed Acronis OS Selector? Also please clarify how you installed two copies of Windows? Did you install the second one with the first drive unplugged?

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

OS Selector is installed under windows XP (drive 2) - this drive was unpluged and XP-64 was installed in drive one. I cand dual boot using the bios and changing the drive boot order but purchased your software to cut down on the steps required to dual boot. Thank you for your help.

John

 

I didn’t think that this bootmanager could boot WinNT from a second hard disk. The specs say – Boot Windows 95 / 98 / ME from a second hard disk. – no mention of 2k or XP.

Haven’t tried this bootmanager for a while so can’t confirm this John. The problem is that the ntloader will only run from the first hard drive, so you need a boot manager that can ‘drive swap’ which emulates the bios change you were doing.

Only one’s I’ve tried and so can recommend are:
www.osloader.com
http://www.boot-us.com
http://www2.arnes.si/~fkomar/xosl.org/

 

Thanks for the info. I was not very clear in my last post. I moved both XP's onto one disk and then used the Xp dual boot with no problems. Then after two days somehow OS Selector came up on boot with an error and I could not boot XP-64 and could not use repair console to fix. Restored Xp and put them back on two drives. I will try osloader but thats why I spent $50 on Acronis - prob not the last 50 I will loose!

John

 

You can’t go wrong with osloader John. I’ve tried most others and always come back to this one. You can make the restore floppy if you want, but I would advise you do make an install floppy, as it can be really useful for recovering your system if something damages your MBR.

It’s been a couple of years since I last tried OS selector and back then it was a bitch to uninstall as it had put its fingers in several pies that a boot manager had no business in touching. I guess it must have matured since then, but I can’t say that it might still not cause conflicts with another bootmanager.

 

Thanks for the info - I tried osl2000 and it installed fine but when I try and boot it says I have an invalid partition ID. Both drives are SATA and that could be the problem or oselector could have changed something.

 

I’ve never personally seen that error John. Is it OSL that is giving this error, or is it from Windows? I don’t think it will have anything to do with having SATA hard drives. Is the XP on the first hard drive booting ok and it is the second drive that is giving the error?

Does changing the bios boot order still work for booting the second hard drive? Which hard drive is XP-64 on? I’m just wondering if this is a quirk of the 64bit XP that I have not come across.

 

drive one is a 300gig with xp-64 - drive 2 is a 250gig with xp. I can dual boot with the bios by changing the boot order but osl2000 will not boot xp or xp64 as it comes up with that partition error.

 

Well I’m sorry John but I’m at a loss. Really apologize for causing you more hassle. I’ve personally used OSL on many machines and most of my family and friends use it and I’ve been recommending it for years on various forums. It has always been 100% dependable and worked first time every time. I’ve never heard of anyone ever needing the uninstall floppy.

I can only think that maybe you do have some fundamental partition error, or possibly Acronis has indeed altered something and the drives don’t read as normal.

I can only suggest that you contact OSL support with the problem. They are really good and may be able to tell you what is wrong. If you send them the debug.log file from the OSL folder they will be able to see your partition details. It may take a couple of days for them to get back to you. support_02@osloader.com

 

Hey man thanks for the help. I did leave the people at osl2000 a message a few days ago. They might have an answer! Thanks again

 

John, the thought comes to mind that maybe you are using translation software to allow your motherboard to see the full size of your hard drives. To explain that, some motherboard bios’ won’t work with extra large hard drives and so something called a Dynamic Drive Overlay is installed in the MBR of the hard drive. Typically this will be done without you knowing it by the hard drive manufacture’s utilities. Were your hard drives an upgrade to your machine and did you use any utility to configure the drives after fitting? The common ones are MaxBlast and EZ-Drive, do you see any mention of these on your POST screens when you boot?

Translation software basically artificially maps the size of the hard drive and it’s partitions. Installing OSL would have overwritten any translation software and this could explain the partition error you got from OSL. What make and model of motherboard do you have? Do you know which bios revision you have?

If this is your problem then your options are to see if there is a bios update available for your motherboard to give support to your large drives. Or use a boot manager that won’t overwrite the translation software. The only one I know of that can ‘drive swap’ is XOSL, In can be installed inside an OS on a FAT partition, but much better to put it on its own dedicated partition.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/resolving_drive_barriers.htm
Scroll about half way down to Software Translation (Dynamic Drive Overlays)