Shoutbox

Say I have two hard drives in my PC. The first (main drive) with WinXP Pro and the 2nd drive with another OS installed. How can boot the PC from the 2nd drive? I tried changing the boot sequence in the BIOS, but it only shows the main drive (of course it also shows the floppy, CD drive, etc). And of course I know I can do this by physically replacing the main drive with the 2nd drive, but I'm looking for a way of doing it without having to connect/reconnect cables.

When you have boot the OS on your first Hard disk,
go to
(in category view of control panel)
control panel > performance and maintanence > system
(in Classic View of control panel)
control panel > system
When you reached system
click on Advance
Under Startup and Recovery, click on settings
Under system startup choose your default operating system.

In this way, you will boot the other OS on the second hard disk

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
of course I know I can do this by physically replacing the main drive with the 2nd drive

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Which will stop Windows from booting (it has to be on the first hard disk).

What is the other OS, by the way?

quote:

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Originally posted by xJ +
Under system startup choose your default operating system.

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That only lists versions of Windows. It's of no use when dual-booting with Linux, *BSD or anything non-Microsoft.

quote:

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Originally posted by xJ +
When you have boot the OS on your first Hard disk,
go to
(in category view of control panel)
control panel > performance and maintanence > system
(in Classic View of control panel)
control panel > system
When you reached system
click on Advance
Under Startup and Recovery, click on settings
Under system startup choose your default operating system.

In this way, you will boot the other OS on the second hard disk

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So say I follow these steps and I indicate the OS corresponding to the 2nd hard drive and I restart, will then the PC boot from the 2nd HD? And if then I want to revert back to booting from the 1st main drive, what should I do?

quote:

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Originally posted by RaceProUK

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
of course I know I can do this by physically replacing the main drive with the 2nd drive

---

Which will stop Windows from booting (it has to be on the first hard disk).

What is the other OS, by the way?

quote:

---

Originally posted by xJ +
Under system startup choose your default operating system.

---

That only lists versions of Windows. It's of no use when dual-booting with Linux, *BSD or anything non-Microsoft.

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Ok, the situation is this: I have two separate physical hard drives. In the 1st hard drive I have WinXP Pro SP2 (currently running my PC). I have a 2nd hard drive that I will connect to the IDE controller as 2nd internal hard drive in my PC. This 2nd hard drive has Win98 installed. So, will xJ's instructions work to be able to boot the PC from the 2nd drive? And will it work for any other Microsoft OS like Win2003, Win2000, Win Vista, etc? Thanks.

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
will xJ's instructions work to be able to boot the PC from the 2nd drive?

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It should work.

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
And will it work for any other Microsoft OS like Win2003, Win2000, Win Vista, etc?

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Like what RaceProUK said, only Microsoft OS will only be listed. Hence, yes, it should work for other Microsoft OS.

quote:

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Originally posted by xJ +

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
will xJ's instructions work to be able to boot the PC from the 2nd drive?

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It should work.

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
And will it work for any other Microsoft OS like Win2003, Win2000, Win Vista, etc?

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Like what RaceProUK said, only Microsoft OS will only be listed. Hence, yes, it should work for other Microsoft OS.

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And if then I want to revert back to booting from the 1st main drive, what should I do? Is there any risk associated with this procedure, like making a drive permanently non-bootable?

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
And if then I want to revert back to booting from the 1st main drive, what should I do? Is there any risk associated with this procedure, like making a drive permanently non-bootable?

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Simply use back the same method.
Long-term switching from 1st drive to 2nd drive and back to 1st drive and vice versa may cause some conflict in the system.

I've been considering doing something like this for dual booting Ubuntu.  I wanna have it on a totally separate drive, but I want to be able to select which OS I'm booting to when I start up, as if I had them both on my primary drive.

quote:

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Originally posted by xJ +

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
And if then I want to revert back to booting from the 1st main drive, what should I do? Is there any risk associated with this procedure, like making a drive permanently non-bootable?

---

Simply use back the same method.
Long-term switching from 1st drive to 2nd drive and back to 1st drive and vice versa may cause some conflict in the system.

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Well, the best thing then is to switch the IDE ribbon cable from one drive to the other whenever necessary...

Would it be anything to do with the drive being a slave or something like that sorry. just querying really.