Dual booting
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So to continue my yesterday's thread on dual booting. This one is more of a question. Say, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. One for the OS, two for storage basically. Planning to get another one, one of them 10K RPM, just for development. I'm /also/ planning to reinstall Windows (and in the process, upgrade to x64). Now, I will definitely need an x86 machine (most likely XP) available, and not in VMWare - an actual physical machine. So dual booting is the solution. Now, in the past, I've had problems with running Vista and XP on the same machine - they were killing each other's Restore Points, Recycle Bins, etc. So here's the plan. Install Vista on one drive. It will be my primary environment. Install XP on another drive, but somehow restrict access to all other drives. ie, if I have 3 drives, then Vista goes on one, XP goes on another (actual physically separate HDD's). Now, Vista should be able to see it's own installation drive (duh), the third drive, and the one where XP is installed (not essential but preferred). XP should only be able to see it's own drive, and not able to see the one where Vista is, and the third one. Is this possible with the default tools? Or maybe there's a custom bootloader (or anything else) that would allow me to have such a configuration?
:badger:
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So to continue my yesterday's thread on dual booting. This one is more of a question. Say, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. One for the OS, two for storage basically. Planning to get another one, one of them 10K RPM, just for development. I'm /also/ planning to reinstall Windows (and in the process, upgrade to x64). Now, I will definitely need an x86 machine (most likely XP) available, and not in VMWare - an actual physical machine. So dual booting is the solution. Now, in the past, I've had problems with running Vista and XP on the same machine - they were killing each other's Restore Points, Recycle Bins, etc. So here's the plan. Install Vista on one drive. It will be my primary environment. Install XP on another drive, but somehow restrict access to all other drives. ie, if I have 3 drives, then Vista goes on one, XP goes on another (actual physically separate HDD's). Now, Vista should be able to see it's own installation drive (duh), the third drive, and the one where XP is installed (not essential but preferred). XP should only be able to see it's own drive, and not able to see the one where Vista is, and the third one. Is this possible with the default tools? Or maybe there's a custom bootloader (or anything else) that would allow me to have such a configuration?
:badger:
its a pity you havnt mentioned a linux partition - last time I had to set up a dual boot machine, 'LILO' as I think it was called in Redhat was one of the best boot loaders I'd seen in a while - with something like that Im pretty sure it would be possible to do what you want Else, someone out there must have a decent boot-loader ... 'G'
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So to continue my yesterday's thread on dual booting. This one is more of a question. Say, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. One for the OS, two for storage basically. Planning to get another one, one of them 10K RPM, just for development. I'm /also/ planning to reinstall Windows (and in the process, upgrade to x64). Now, I will definitely need an x86 machine (most likely XP) available, and not in VMWare - an actual physical machine. So dual booting is the solution. Now, in the past, I've had problems with running Vista and XP on the same machine - they were killing each other's Restore Points, Recycle Bins, etc. So here's the plan. Install Vista on one drive. It will be my primary environment. Install XP on another drive, but somehow restrict access to all other drives. ie, if I have 3 drives, then Vista goes on one, XP goes on another (actual physically separate HDD's). Now, Vista should be able to see it's own installation drive (duh), the third drive, and the one where XP is installed (not essential but preferred). XP should only be able to see it's own drive, and not able to see the one where Vista is, and the third one. Is this possible with the default tools? Or maybe there's a custom bootloader (or anything else) that would allow me to have such a configuration?
:badger:
I for a while had an XP machine set up and a Vista machine set up. The way which I did it was had the XP installed then added a new hard drive and installed Vista (while unplugging the XP one). Then plugged in the XP one again. To switch between the two I change the boot priority in the BIOS to one or the other. It took slightly longer to boot this way but it meant that during the setup no machine had any knowledge of the other and both ran perfectly without inteferring with one another. Of course your MoBo needs to support such a feature. Doens't matter now as the only place I use XP is inside a VM now, just running Vista x64 as a host and all other version of Windows / Linux in VMs as and when I need them.
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I for a while had an XP machine set up and a Vista machine set up. The way which I did it was had the XP installed then added a new hard drive and installed Vista (while unplugging the XP one). Then plugged in the XP one again. To switch between the two I change the boot priority in the BIOS to one or the other. It took slightly longer to boot this way but it meant that during the setup no machine had any knowledge of the other and both ran perfectly without inteferring with one another. Of course your MoBo needs to support such a feature. Doens't matter now as the only place I use XP is inside a VM now, just running Vista x64 as a host and all other version of Windows / Linux in VMs as and when I need them.
All possible and works fine unless you hit on software that expects C drive as the root, base for runtime etc .. Probably worth checking out lilo and grub as mentioned in case you plan expanding the universe beyond Windohs. I believe once Vista bootloader takes over you should stick to it. What you described sounds solid and you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever ( Funny you mention the problems of them coexsting together, I have had experienced issues with some Vista installs seemingly interfering with XP and vice versa in the early days ). It has been stable with Vista x64/ XP x64 / 2003 x64 combos on quite a few boxes in my epxerience but might be just luck; starting with Vista install first and all running fine with one single drive partioned into 3 or more. No problems for a year, apart from Vista x64's own CD burning software. Agree however seperate physical drives and making them invisible for precaution (until you need to do it manually) is safer than anything. (don't know what the path is to 'upgrading' from x86 to x64, but I believe you have to decide whether you will have 2003 running regardless of 32/64 bit before you slap XP x86 on and expect it to 'upgrade'. XP x64 is the same build number as 2003 Server iirc, and I remember some issues on installs, can't remember correctly, but likely SQL Server was involved too.. ahh, short-term memory and MS tying their software to OS label instead of build numbers ) (oh yes, it reported succesful installation of SQL EE edition on XP x64 or similar only to find out everything was there but the SQL Server itself, great! )
modified on Sunday, December 23, 2007 6:49:32 PM
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So to continue my yesterday's thread on dual booting. This one is more of a question. Say, I have 3 hard drives in my machine. One for the OS, two for storage basically. Planning to get another one, one of them 10K RPM, just for development. I'm /also/ planning to reinstall Windows (and in the process, upgrade to x64). Now, I will definitely need an x86 machine (most likely XP) available, and not in VMWare - an actual physical machine. So dual booting is the solution. Now, in the past, I've had problems with running Vista and XP on the same machine - they were killing each other's Restore Points, Recycle Bins, etc. So here's the plan. Install Vista on one drive. It will be my primary environment. Install XP on another drive, but somehow restrict access to all other drives. ie, if I have 3 drives, then Vista goes on one, XP goes on another (actual physically separate HDD's). Now, Vista should be able to see it's own installation drive (duh), the third drive, and the one where XP is installed (not essential but preferred). XP should only be able to see it's own drive, and not able to see the one where Vista is, and the third one. Is this possible with the default tools? Or maybe there's a custom bootloader (or anything else) that would allow me to have such a configuration?
:badger:
Anton Afanasyev wrote:
Is this possible with the default tools? Or maybe there's a custom bootloader (or anything else) that would allow me to have such a configuration?
Download GAG. It's free. It doesn't work great for partition multi-boot, but drive multi-boot is great. I have managed both now though. For the former it is just more complicated, for the latter, it is pretty easy. You install Vista to one drive (virgin install) Install XP to the another drive after pulling the Vista drive (or reverse the two, but the point is to remove the drive so the OS install doesn't see the other one) Now you have two boot drives that never saw the other OS. Choose which drive to boot, install GAG on it, and set up bios to boot that drive. Now setup GAG to know which drive is which and now everything is pretty easy. You can do this with Linux and other OS's.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)