Help! Dual boot XP and Vista with 2 hard drives

H

hashcake

Member
Hi all,

I have Vista installed on a RAID 1 array.
I have added a second hard drive to the PC and installed Win XP.
Once in Win XP I have followed the instructions to a tee for getting the system to work in dual boot but I get a problem with easybcd.
When I click on 'Add Entry' in the 'Add/Remove Entries' page, easybcd crashes and it tells me I can ignore the error and continue.
However, if I do this it doesn't create an entry for Win XP and when I reboot it just goes back into Win Vista.
I have tried using easybcd 1.7 and 1.6 and with version 1.6, I have made sure drive 'D' is selected in the 'Add/Remove Entries' page.

I'd rather not wipe my RAID 1 hard drives and set up 2 partitions then install both OSes from scratch so if anyone can help me solve this problem, I would really appreciate it.

Addendum:

It' ok, I have sussed it out.
I booted back into Vista, fired up easybcd and added an entry for XP and pointed it to the correct drive and bingo!
 
Last edited:
I had been just about to say that it's not related to RAID1 at all, and the general EasyBCD dual-booting and troubleshooting guidelines -- Glad you got it working :smile:
 
Help with Dual Booting with Raid1

Hi! I'm new to this forum. After reading a ton of threads that are similar to mine, I've decided to post my own:
Here's my setup- sata0 Vista preinstalled. I added another hard disk to sata3 and while installing XP Pro SP3, I got a bootup problem and disconnected the Vista hard disk. I'm able to automatically to boot into Vista after repairing the Startup. The interesting thing is that I can Also boot into XP Pro but only by choosing to boot from sata3 disk. I naturally assumed that after adding the second entry in EasyBCD 1.7.2 I would be able to boot directly into Xp Pro. The I discovered Your forum, and added three files to Vista drive. I also edited the boot.ini to look to sata3:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Both installations show me Drive C when booted into. When I'm in Vista: Vista is C: and Xp Pro is D: and when I'm in Xp Pro: Xp Pro is C: and Vista is D:.
It's not a big problem, but I would really like to be able to boot to XP without choosing F12 and choosing the sata 3 disk.
 
Hi Terry! Originally it was set to rdisk1, and didn't work, so I naturally assumed since the XP installation is on a different drive and connected to Sata 3 whereas Vista is Sata 0, it should work. Actually, Terry I have the Boot.ini set this way only on Vista Drive. The Xp drive still has it as rdisk1! I appreciate any help. Thanks for responding. Rob2all
 
NTLDR, which is chained to by Vista's bootmgr when you select XP from the Vista boot menu, gets its rdisk information from the BIOS. If you're booting via the F12 menu, it'll already have set the rdisk values in the BIOS, so the rdisk(1) on your XP system's boot.ini will be correct.
The numbers refer to the position in the HDD list in the BIOS (starting at 0 - the default boot disk), not to the SATA channel, so rdisk(1) should be correct in your C:\boot.ini too.
If it's not working, can you post a Vista disk management screenshot, and paste the display from the EasyBCD settings page, so we can see why it's failing.
 
Thank You Terry! You're absolutely right! I made a mistake of thinking that originally it was rdisk1,when it really was rdisk0, so after making this change everything worked. Thanks again, You Wizard!!
 
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