I have been working with Microsoft for a solid week on this issue. So let me tell you a story. But, lest I forget, let me say thanks for letting me register here. This looks like a GREAT forum, and I am definitely going to add it to my favorites. This is my first post, so be nice, OK? If you want to skip the story, just go on ahead to "THE PROBLEM...." below..
Anyway, I have a big personal, home-built quad machine with a P35 motherboard by Gigabyte. It has 3 deparate boot disks (2 SATA and 1 IDE) In addition, I have 3 separate external storage disks, 2 internal storage disks, and 2 DVD drives. That said, you can see its complicated.
My machine was running fine with XP on two boot disks. But then, I got crazy and decided it was time to go with Vista. But I had to have Vista 64 (just because) and so I bought Vista 64 Business. Of course, before I did all this, I backed everything up (whew)
But then the fun started...Silly me, I fully believed that I could multi-boot from Vista to my XP machines with no problem. But when it got done, it was really screwed up, and that's when I called Microsoft. Actually, they have devoted TONS of time to my problem, (like 8 hours solid on the phone from India) They took control of my machine, installed EasyBCD, and proceeded to try to fix my problems. At one time, they wiped out my disks. The whole time, the guys (bless their Indian hearts) you could tell were reading their way through the problem. In short, I finally told them I would figure it out myself and that's when I decided I needed some non-Microsoft help! So I came here!
THE PROBLEM.... At this point, I have it working (sort of) But there's one little wrinkle that just won't fix itself. I boot into the Vista boot menu and can boot into only ONE of my XP hard drives. That's the main issue. I can add another BCD boot entry just fine, but the other XP boot drive won't boot. If I choose the OTHER XP drive from the boot menu, it will only boot into whichever drive is second on my BIOS boot order list!
For example, if I want to boot into my SATA XP drive, I must put it second in the BIOS list. Even if the third disk in the boot order list in the BIOS is the IDE drive, it will boot into the SATA drive. It doesn't matter what the Vista boot menu says. The second and third entries (after the Vista entry) will only boot into the second drive in the BIOS!
What's odd in the BCD entries is that the second and third disk BCD ID # is the same. So I figure that is why the disks are mixed up. But I can't figure out how to change that. Here is a sample BCD listing.
So, if you can steer me in the right direction, you guys will be trumping all the Microsoft engineers in India! :happy: Thanks in advance, and I look forward to chatting.
Anyway, I have a big personal, home-built quad machine with a P35 motherboard by Gigabyte. It has 3 deparate boot disks (2 SATA and 1 IDE) In addition, I have 3 separate external storage disks, 2 internal storage disks, and 2 DVD drives. That said, you can see its complicated.
My machine was running fine with XP on two boot disks. But then, I got crazy and decided it was time to go with Vista. But I had to have Vista 64 (just because) and so I bought Vista 64 Business. Of course, before I did all this, I backed everything up (whew)
But then the fun started...Silly me, I fully believed that I could multi-boot from Vista to my XP machines with no problem. But when it got done, it was really screwed up, and that's when I called Microsoft. Actually, they have devoted TONS of time to my problem, (like 8 hours solid on the phone from India) They took control of my machine, installed EasyBCD, and proceeded to try to fix my problems. At one time, they wiped out my disks. The whole time, the guys (bless their Indian hearts) you could tell were reading their way through the problem. In short, I finally told them I would figure it out myself and that's when I decided I needed some non-Microsoft help! So I came here!
THE PROBLEM.... At this point, I have it working (sort of) But there's one little wrinkle that just won't fix itself. I boot into the Vista boot menu and can boot into only ONE of my XP hard drives. That's the main issue. I can add another BCD boot entry just fine, but the other XP boot drive won't boot. If I choose the OTHER XP drive from the boot menu, it will only boot into whichever drive is second on my BIOS boot order list!
For example, if I want to boot into my SATA XP drive, I must put it second in the BIOS list. Even if the third disk in the boot order list in the BIOS is the IDE drive, it will boot into the SATA drive. It doesn't matter what the Vista boot menu says. The second and third entries (after the Vista entry) will only boot into the second drive in the BIOS!
What's odd in the BCD entries is that the second and third disk BCD ID # is the same. So I figure that is why the disks are mixed up. But I can't figure out how to change that. Here is a sample BCD listing.
So, if you can steer me in the right direction, you guys will be trumping all the Microsoft engineers in India! :happy: Thanks in advance, and I look forward to chatting.
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