Change boot drive in dual-boot system

[ElViti]

How do you change the BOOT drive of dual-boot system running Windows XP Pro - - without re-installing Win XP?
The current boot drive is C: (Maxtor) cabled to PRI Mstr and running Windows 98.
Later added drive D: (Western Digital) cabled to SEC Mstr and installed Windows XP with dual-boot.
I boot into Win XP most of the time, but the system always boots from drive C: (Maxtor) where boot.ini is located.
I would like to switch so that the system boots from the drive where Win/XP is installed (West Digital).
Scenario 1
If drive C: (Maxtor) is disabled, the system will not boot
-I get msg ' NTLDR is missing' and 'Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'
-BIOS automatically picks West Digital as the boot drive
-I have run FIXBOOT, copied boot.ini to West Dig volume and other indicators show that the drive is bootable.
Scenario 2
Recable West Digital drive to PRI Mstr (C:) and disable Maxtor
-system will not boot
-msgs 'NTLDR is missing' and 'Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'
Scenario 3
Recable West Digital to PRI Mstr (C:) and attach Maxtor to SEC Mstr (D:)
Don't remember exactly what happened but somehow Maxtor got messed up and later system would not boot up in the original configuration. Had to run FIXBOOT to repair Maxtor so that I could boot the system again. Not going to try that again.

What am I overlooking or how can I do this? Will appreciate all help!





:confused:

XP HAD to install it's boot files to "C:\", that's just the way it goes.

In order to do what you wanted, you would of had to of disabled your PRI Master, went in and made your SEC Master the Active Partition, then installed. It would have seen that drive as "C:\". But then, anytime you would want to boot to XP, you would have to disable your PRI Master drive.

Just remember, XP HAS to install it's boot files to "C:\".

You might find a 3rd Party boot mgr., but I'm not sure if it'll do what you want since you say you disable your "C:\" and that's where XP's boot files are.

[Xeroid]

Would this help him any?

Specifying the Default Operating System for Startup

I think, correct me if I'm wrong, he's wanting to move all the boot files over to "D:\". That's not possible, because the Windows OS, HAS to boot from "C:\". "C:\" HAS to go on an Active Partition.

What I did, with mine, was went into the BIOS and disabled my PRI Master. I then used 'FDISK' and made the PRI Slave the 'Active Partition'. Upon rebooting, I then installed Win2K. Now, if I want to boot into 2K, I HAVE to disable the PRI Master. I can leave the PRI Slave enabled when I boot from the PRI Master, because it's looking at the first 'Active Partition' to boot from. I could probably use some 3rd Party boot mgr. so I wouldn't have to disable the PRI Master, but this was just temporary and really have no need to dual boot.

You could try disabling the PRI Master, use 'FDISK' and make your SEC Master and 'Active Partion', then boot w/ the XP disk and try the 'FIXBOOT' and maybe 'FIXMBR' to see if it will boot w/ the PRI Master disabled.

[ElViti]

Sorry, I wanted to be as clear as I could when I stated my problem but I guess there are always different ways to look at a problem. What I want to do is to boot from the drive where XP is installed which is D: right now. I want to recable and make XP drive C: and boot from it. I hope this clarifies it some. From the replies so far I don't know if we are getting to the issue, but thanks. I can use the help.

[meese]

You can only boot a win98 pc from the c partition. unless you use a third party boot loader program. So if you make XP the C drive, 98 will not work.

[ElViti]

Let's say Meese is right, and let's forget about Windows 98 for now, except that if C: drive with Win 98 suddenly went south, my machine would be unbootable because I can't get it to boot from the drive where XP is (even though it would be the new C: if the other drive with Win98 went away). This is the main reason I want to reconfigure. I think I have to re-install XP on C: but I was hoping for an easier solution. And I don't know what to do about Win 98, probably have to re-install that as well. What a bummer.

[meese]

You should be able to get the XP drive to boot, even if the win98 drive takes a dive, and even if the XP drive is listed as D. Its only win9x that needs to boot to the C: partition.

The only files needed to boot a W2K or XP system is:

NTLDR
NTDETECT.COM
BOOT.INI

The first two are the same for all systems. BOOT.INI of course is different depending on the number of hardrives and how they

are partitioned. You can make a boot floppy that will boot to any of the IDE channels. Copy all the files listed above to a floppy, then open the boot.ini file with notepad and edit it as follows:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="PRI IDE CH 0" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="SEC IDE CH 0" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINNT="PRI IDE CH 1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)\WINNT="SEC IDE CH 1" /fastdetect

Typical non SCSI motherboards have two IDE controllers. Primary and Secondary. Each controller has two channels "0 or Master" and "1 or slave". The "rdisk" value relates as follows:

rdisk(0) is Primary Controller channel 0 (Master)
rdisk(1) is Secondary Controller channel 0 (Master)
rdisk(2) is Primary Controller channel 1 (Slave)
rdisk(3) is Secondary Controller channel 1 (Slave)

Now if each Hard drive in the system has only one partition then the "partition" value will always be "1". For some reason the partitons start with "1" and the rdisk start with "0".

So as an example if have a hard drive with three partitons on Channel 0 (Master) of the Secondary IDE controller and that drive has 3 partitons and you boot to the third partiton on that drive, the section of the boot.ini file would look as follows:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(3)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

[ElViti]

Meese is right on. I did not know about ntdetect.com so by copying that over and making sure that ntldr was in the root directory on the second drive (which it wasn't), I can now boot from the second drive when the first drive (w/Win98) is disabled. I would like to point out something that may not be readily transparent regarding rdisk values in boot.ini and that is that they appear to be relative and not positional subject to how disks are cabled. So in Meese's example above, the rdisk values 0-3 would be correct if in fact there were 4 disks in the system. If the first disk was removed from the lineup, subsequent rdisk values would change. At least this is true in my case. With only one disk in the system when the primary is removed, the system still would not boot until I changed the rdisk value to 0, even though the disk itself is still cabled to SEC Mstr. In my two disk system the rdisk value for that same disk is 1. That's why it is called rdisk, r for relative. I just caught on.
Thank you Meese and thanks everyone for their contributions.

[meese]

Thanks ElViti

Actually the boot.ini above with all the rdisk choices is for booting a system from a floppy from which you do not know the actual boot drive. This way you have all the choices. I post it to try and get the rdisk point across. None the less I was not aware the rdsik values would change automatically. Thanks for pointing this out.