Why boot.ini????

Could someone please explain the relationship between the OS Selector and Boot.ini?

Here is my problem:
I have 3 XP Pro SP2 partitions on a HDD and each have their own Boot.ini that refers to only that partition. Works OK.

However, I want to copy one XP Pro SP2 partition to a second HDD. I know about using Sysprep, and I know about creating the partition etc. But what I don't get is which Boot.ini needs to know about the new partition, and why.

I have checked through threads, but there doesn't appear to be a clear explanation af the relationship between the OS Selector and Boot.ini

btw: I purchased Acronis because I was led to believe that it could easily handle multiple XP boots across multiple drives.....

 

OSS takes over/replaces boot.ini, that is what is in the bootwiz folders.

If you are just copying one partition to another drive, then as far as boot.ini is concerned, you just need to copy that partitions boot.ini file. The only thing you'll have to change in the boot.ini is the partition # . If this drive is going to be insitu with the original drive then you'll have to alter the drive # as well.

For the first partition on the first (only) drive the boot.ini entry should look similar to.

[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

Where rdisk is your harddrive number 0= first, 1= second etc if more than one drive on your system.

Partition is well the partition number, numbered in a similar fashion.

Colin

 

Thanks. I sort of assumed that, but just wanted to be sure....

It would be nice if there was a step by step procedure in the user guide......