XP on two HDD?

M

mjcmbk

Member
Hi, I have read a bit in the support forums but could not find a difinitive answer. Must Vista be used? I would like to run XP on two different drives. I have a laptop with two bays. I have recovered my factory image to another HDD and want to do some testing to make sure that some software I have on the first drive can be backed up properly. I would like to have the option on boot on which XP to run so that I don't have to continually swap drives.

Thanks,
Craig
 
Hi Craig,

EasyBCD can run on XP, but its intended for systems with at least one installation of Vista or Windows 7.

Boot.ini is relatively simple to edit. You just need to enable viewing of the protected OS files and locate and edit boot.ini with a new line pointing to the second XP install on the other disk.
 
Do you have a link to a place that can explain how to edit the boot.ini file? I know the basics but want to get it right.

Which XP should I run easyBCD on? The one that I intend to keep? Does it matter?

Thanks
 
Because its an XP only system you have no use for EasyBCD. If you have found the boot.ini file it'll look something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP 1" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP 2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Click to expand...

The numbers in bold tell it which disk/partition that particular install of XP is on, so if its not on disk 1 or disk 2 in partition 1 you'll need to modify the values of the second entry until it works, or if you post disk management screenshot I can tell you what the numbers should be.
 
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