[kouta]

hi;

i have a K8N diamond MSI

3 HDD - details:
first one: 40GB IDE Seagate (operating System is Vista Business Edition ORIGINAL).
this one is connected to the master IDE. in other words this is the master Drive i boot from normally
second one: 80GB IDE Seagate (operating System Windows XP Professional SP3 ORIGINAL).
this one is connected to the master IDE. in other words this is the master Drive i boot from normally/becomes slave when connect the two HDD
third one: 300GB SATA I Maxtor (Dynamic Volume Storage ONLY).
i have two SATA controllers this one is connected to the Slave one, the master SATA is EMPTY

and the other stuff i don't think they are important for this problem so am not going to mention them, if they are needed i will post them.

usually i install one if Linux versions on the second HDD (80GB) and then make GRUP and choose which OS i want to boot into. (never tried this with vista, i always had XP).

this time i installed XP, can i connect the two HDD and choose which OS i want... like how i used to do with LINUX?

i tried to connect them, but it gave me Failure to boot... so i guess there is a trick to it....

i asked some people and they told me it should work but you have to install Vista first...

i bought this 80GB couple days a go, and i had vista for over 3 months now... both where installed a clean installation. the result was that the solution didn't work.

some said vista is a [bleep] in this kinda stuff and there is no way you can connect it with anther OS.

anyone knows how i can connect them to gather or a place where i can get some help.

thanks.

PS:why i want to connect them in the first place?

1- its hard to keep switching the PC off and change the HDD drives to change the OS
2- i found that XP is better for my work applications, and more stable at the moment
3- the first HDD (40GB) is getting old and the free space is only 13GB after i have deleted a lot of programs i use to work, hence bought the 80GB!

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I have heard that there are some tricks to get grub to boot Vista. You might try a web search for that as I don't remember where I heard what the tricks were. I think it was on a magazine type web page. I heard that it can be done, which would allow you to create a small boot partition (under 100Mb), which would allow you to boot whatever OS you wanted.

You can shutdown the machine and replace the disks, using a removable drive tray, but power cycling the machine can be hard on all the electronics and many of the removable drive trays have limited air flow and are not intended for constant insertion.

Another option, depending on your machine, is to load Linux and then use a package like VirtualBox to have a virtual machine. Then you have access to all of the operating systems at once (if you have enough disk space and memory), or you can select which Windoze machine you want to run without switching the disks. There are also packages for Windoze too, but I am not familiar with them. I have a virtual XP machine at work and it is quite nice and works well.

[Kemasa]

I have heard that there are some tricks to get grub to boot Vista. You might try a web search for that as I don't remember where I heard what the tricks were. I think it was on a magazine type web page. I heard that it can be done, which would allow you to create a small boot partition (under 100Mb), which would allow you to boot whatever OS you wanted.

You can shutdown the machine and replace the disks, using a removable drive tray, but power cycling the machine can be hard on all the electronics and many of the removable drive trays have limited air flow and are not intended for constant insertion.

Another option, depending on your machine, is to load Linux and then use a package like VirtualBox to have a virtual machine. Then you have access to all of the operating systems at once (if you have enough disk space and memory), or you can select which Windoze machine you want to run without switching the disks. There are also packages for Windoze too, but I am not familiar with them. I have a virtual XP machine at work and it is quite nice and works well.

[kouta]

thanks for the reply.

you got things mixed up my friend, i font have Linux anymore, i just mentioned it as an example when i used to do it, now i only have Vista and XP on different HDD.... and i want a screen like the one GRUP generate when you use linux and another OS.

thanks for you help again

[Kemasa]

The order can be important with Windoze, so you might need to install Vista first.

You can also boot the systems with Grub too, even if you don't have Linux loaded, it just takes a small partition (and some tricks for Vista), then a Live CD to make changes to the boot information.

[kouta]

i had vista first, and then i installed XP on the other HDD, today something strange happened.. the HDD used to see one another in the BIOS but cant boot, today only one was shown as the master and the slave is not there, and the master was the XP drive, the one supposed to be the SLAVE!

*************************
FIXED

now i can see both HDD, if am in VISTA i can see the XP HDD, and if i am in XP i can see VISTA HDD, but vista is still dominating the boot, when ever i open my PC it boot automatically to VISTA...how can i fix this without using GRUP?

thanks

PS: i have connected them this way:

1. Master VISTA HDD.
2. Slave XP HDD.
3. SATA Master HDD.

i don't want the XP HDD to be the Master... unless it helps to make the screen to appear.

*************************
FIXED

i have managed to dual boot from vista boot loader into XP.

thanks for your help.

Edited by kouta, 07 July 2008 - 11:23 PM.