Either boot ini or me are confused

Will

Member
Hello
I have a desktop with 3 physical disks. See attached image.

The last one I've added was the SATA disk.

Prior to installing VISTA to this disk I was able to multiboot to a Vista version (on what now appears as drive I as well as the two XPs.

Having installed VISTA tot the SATA disk I no longer could log into either XP.

Hence I found and installed EasyBCD. I did peruse the documentation and I did what I thought its right now I get the usual error re disk hardware when attempting to boot into XP.

If I disable access to the SATA drive via the BIOS I can boot into all previous OSs with no problem.

My intention is to have the VISTA on the SATA drive as the main OS so I hope not to have to mess with doing XP repairs that might upset the VISTA boot.

On the same thought I would prefer not having to introduce 3rd party partitioning utilities (not to mention that linux command lines are a mystery to me).

Your help will be much appreciated
Best regards

Will

[boot loader]
timeout=25
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1" /FASTDETECT=OPTIN
 

Attachments

  • P360 partitions.JPG
    P360 partitions.JPG
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Last edited:
Hi Will, welcome to the boards.
Have you read the Wiki guide about XP in a dual boot
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP
Follow the trouble shooting link and you should find every known problem described and fixed.
Essentially, to boot XP, its boot files (or a copy) must be on the boot disk.
read the guide and make sure you've got everything you should have on your new sata disk.
 
Hi Will, welcome to the boards.
Have you read the Wiki guide about XP in a dual boot
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP
Follow the trouble shooting link and you should find every known problem described and fixed.
Essentially, to boot XP, its boot files (or a copy) must be on the boot disk.
read the guide and make sure you've got everything you should have on your new sata disk.
Thanks Terry
1. I have read the documentation
2. I have the necessary XP boot files
3. VISTA installed on the SATA works just fine

The problem is that neither XP will boot. I get the menu options as per boot.ini but then I get Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware error.

I suspect it might be to do with the HDD and or Partitions order having changed after installing SATA disk.

Perhaps you or another Guru could actually look at the file I originally attached. I now also attach the output from BCDEDIT.

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {faa2556b-dcb5-11dc-b060-ebe2accfc46e}
displayorder {current}
{d948d774-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
{d948d76c-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
{d948d772-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 20

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {faa2556b-dcb5-11dc-b060-ebe2accfc46e}
nx OptIn

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {d948d774-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
device partition=C:
path \NTLDR
description Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {d948d76c-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
device partition=I:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate (recovered)
osdevice partition=I:
systemroot \Windows

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {d948d772-dcac-11dc-8e9a-8bd0bf8ae26e}
device partition=C:
path \NST\NeoGrub.mbr
description NeoGrub Bootloader
 
Well, I'm looking at your attachment and I see drive D: which is Windows XP SP2, but which entry in that pic is your second XP partition (so I can know what drive ARC path to use!)
 
OK, I *think* your disk() values are wrong.

Assuming both your XP drives are ATA (not SATA), they most likely share a controller, and should both be the same numbers.

At any rate, modify your boot.ini like this:
Code:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1" /FASTDETECT=OPTIN
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1" /FASTDETECT=OPTIN

Try all four entries and see which (if any) work.
 
That worked a treat - the result indicates that contrary to what VISTA reported the rdisk numbers had to be incremented by one. That is that even though the SATA disk is shown last in fact it seems to be rdisk 0.

Anyway, many thanks for your help
 
That's weird....
Are all entries being recognized as disk(0)? One would think the mix of SATA and IDE drives would have bumped disk() by 1, and left rdisk() intact....
 
This is what I've got too, SATA2 1st HD, IDE 2nd in BIOS
Disk Management shows IDE as Disk 0, SATA2 as Disk1
Vista boot manager (and HnS) think that SATA2 is Disk 0 (No OS on IDE, just pagefile/backup so boot manager doesn't care)
How's a poor boy supposed to know what to number them when he's in trouble ?
 
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