So here's what i'm trying to do. I have windows XP installed on two hard drives, one that was my original HDD, one that i've pulled from another system. Without reinstalling windows or otherwise fucking with either install short of changing some boot options, I'd like to be able to select which drive I boot from on start up. I haven't yet found a particularly easy way to do this. Anyone have any suggestions before I start manualy editing boot.ini?

11/5/2005 5:47:38 PM

you are gonna have to reinstall Windows on one of those drives probably

even if you pish with the boot.ini, both of them can't be assigned C:

[Edited on November 5, 2005 at 6:00 PM. Reason : *]

11/5/2005 5:58:52 PM

BEST TOOL EVER

[/thread]

(Mostly because with Boot Magic you can "hide" the other OS partition or drive from the booted OS. This lets you keep everything separate. Reinstalling a new OS is easy and painless usually.)

[Edited on November 5, 2005 at 6:05 PM. Reason : +]

11/5/2005 6:02:01 PM

did you pull the drive from a similar system? i'm surprised it would boot with completely different hardware...and tell me again why you want a dual boot of the same os?

11/5/2005 6:11:45 PM

Quote :

"even if you pish with the boot.ini, both of them can't be assigned C: "

Not a problem, my original drive thinks that it's drive D: anyway.

Quote :

"did you pull the drive from a similar system? "

Mostly similar, and I've found Windows (XP at least) isn't that fragile. The last time I did a hardware upgrade it might as well have been a new computer with the old HDD.

Quote :

"nd tell me again why you want a dual boot of the same os?"

Because it's easier than attempting to merge the two systems at the moment.

11/5/2005 6:41:58 PM

Just edit boot.ini and you'll be fine. (Might get a stop error or two on that second system, but that's fixable with a reinstall).

Try (http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm) as well. Not 100% sure if it will work, but it helped when dual booting an XP/Linux system.

11/5/2005 7:40:42 PM