dual boot nightmare

[dorin]

hi there, plsssss i need your help as this problem is driving me crazy!

so, i made an image to drive c: (freshly installed)part of the main hdd (hdd 0) and "clone"-d it to the main drive in ultrabay adapter hdd 1

few months ago i came up with this but now the same solution is useless.

by changing the line in boot ini for second windows (called windows2) to rdisk (1) as before now it gives me a windows with boot core on drive E: (hdd1 partition 1) but with all programs loaded at C: (hdd 0 partition 1)

if i try to boot from hdd 1 straight with hdd 0 out when in boot.ini (hdd 1) i write rdisk (0) it goes till in the end i have the blue windows logo (the one wich comes before "welcome" blue screen, and stays there forever

if rdisk is changed to 1 then i get a long text like
"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration pb. could not read from selected boot disk, check boot path
...."

did anyone managed a succesfull dual botting of a cloned system? i really need to use a cloned windows on ultrabay.
what can i do to make it bootable from ultrabay and to respect the drive oder (that c: is partition 1 off the hdd which boots)

thanks alot!

dorin

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK you should have only 1 active partition in a PC/laptop. That would be the first partition (C) on the normal HD. See if you still have an FDISK program from an older Windows version, with which you can change those settings. Your cloned HD also has an active partition, which confuses the hell out of XP.

[dorin]

realbackstuff, thanks, i tried your sugestion but with no help, same thing happens...
even if booted from hdd1 the order is
c , d from hdd0
e , f from hdd1 with windows core loaded in e and with references in c....

[RealBlackStuff]

doh...
You cloned the C-drive which has all its registry- and file-pointers going to the C-drive...
The clone on the E-drive also has all it's pointers going to the C-drive.
The only way I can think of changing that behaviour, is by assigning new driveletters to each HD/partition every time you want to change HDs.
If that's too convoluted, you'll find no other solution than installing a second XP from scratch on the new HD.
AFAIK you can use the same XP-key (or a corporate XP).

[dorin]

yeap but few months ago it worked flawlessly, just had to change the the rdisk value from 0 to 1 in boot.ini
for a wierdo reason same treat ain't working again, windows updates or whatever stops me doing that.

is it a way to fix the registries? honestly i'd do anything than going through all the install hasle again...

thanks,

dorin

[RealBlackStuff]

Check the attributes of boot.ini. Mine has only the A bit set, instead of HSA.
My boot.ini is on disk(0) and looks as follows
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="G-Windows XP Pro" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="C-Basic Windows 2000 Pro" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="F-Main Windows 2000 Pro" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Recovery Console" /cmdcons

On rdisk(0) I have partitions CDEF and on rdisk(1) I have GHIJ.
My normally used partition is XP on G (first partition on second disk).
I installed XP on G with all pointers also going to G.
I never cloned a partition other than for replacing a hard disk.
If you are constantly switching back and forth, you should really make a fresh install on the other HD.
Look at it this way: in the time you have wasted so far trying to pursue this (unnatural) goal, you could have performed a number of completely new installs, and have used Easter to go out for a nice day in the country or whatever recreation you pursue!

[non460725]

I had the same problem with a cloned Windows 2000 (XP is on the C: drive, Win2K on the E: drive). It dawned on me that the Win2k installation was looking for its files on C:, so I decided to do a fresh install of Win2k on E: But that would take hours, installing drivers, applications, etc., so I used Bootit NG instead, plus my cloned Win2k installation (from an Acronic True Image backup of Win2k on a C: drive).

Worked very well. I consider the $35 for Bootit NG was worth the savings of hours of installation time.

[dorin]

non460725. can you please detail abit what you did with booit ng? so you have now the cloned partition on another drive/partition than the original? for me the only way was to make a fresh install. its cool though, on the ultrabase, so home, i have all the software i need, whilst in the thinkpads hdd its just a bare minimum installation..it flies!