1 Topic by archis (edited by archis 2007-05-22 02:27:48)

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Topic: Does XP really "hate" XP on that other drive?

Can someone confirm or refute the notion that you cannot have two separate installs of XP Home on *separate drives* (as opposed to separate partitions) unless you hide them from each other in the boot loader? In other words, does Windows freak out if you install a second copy on a different HD and then just boot back into the original drive? (This is how I read the last part of one of the gparted tutorials)

--> This article seems to suggest that XP will tolerate a copy of XP, as long as it is not *on the same partition*.

"Windows XP officially supports dual-booting with any Microsoft Windows operating systems as well as MS-DOS and OS/2. You can multi-boot almost any OS that uses FAT or NTFS file systems on the boot drive. "

http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/p … 0&rl=1

Clarifications appreciated!

2 Reply by archis

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Re: Does XP really "hate" XP on that other drive?

Perhaps I'm need to clarify what I want to do? lol..

I'd like to create a multi-boot switch-over situation with windows/linux flavors installed on both drives, and separate boot loaders for each HD. I would want to be able to load any OS on any drive from either boot loader, and switch between boot loaders through the BIOS boot sequence. It would be somewhat similar to the following schema, but with an additional windows install on the second HD.

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6317&d=1140521977


I would install windows on the one and only primary partition on either drive, and everything else onto the logical volumes of an extended partition.

I currently have win/linux multi-boot/grub boot loader on the first HD and want to set up the second HD. For that, I will first install XP and let it add an MBR, followed by a Linux install which overwrites the MBR with a pointer to the Grub boot loader.

My question is: do I need to take special precautions when I install two instances of windows XP in two different places - primary partitions on two different drives? Is Larry's word of caution only applicable to a situation with one or more ("windows-style") MBR or does it apply for boot loading as well?

And secondly, do I need to hide the two windows instances from each other in the boot loaders or not? The Grub manual seems to imply that it is only necessary when trying to install more than one instance of windows onto different (primary) partitions of the same HD.

3 Reply by archis (edited by archis 2007-05-22 18:18:14)

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Re: Does XP really "hate" XP on that other drive?

Looking over Dan Goddell's summary, the important bit would be to hide the existing Windows OS on the primary partition of the first HD before installing the second instance on the other drive - otherwise, the XP installer will add an XP-style boot loader to HD1 and mess things up:

During installation of an NT-family OS, the file "ntldr" is copied to the root directory of the active partition and the installation routine scans the computer for another known Microsoft OS. A boot.ini file is created, which ntldr will read at each boot. If no other OS is found this boot.ini file is configured to boot straight into the new OS, but if another Microsoft OS is found boot.ini is automatically configured for multibooting.

So, the procedure would then be to

1) hide the existing windows partition on HD1 from within gparted or grub
2) install the second instance of windows on HD2. Because it can't see the first instance, it will add a standard (non-multi-boot) MBR to HD2
3) install linux on HD2, allowing it to replace the Microsoft MBR with the boot loader
4) configure both boot loaders on HD1 and HD2 to hide the other drive's windows partitions from each other when booting into XP

Thoughts?

4 Reply by ThunderM

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Re: Does XP really "hate" XP on that other drive?

i would do something like unplug HD1 , instal windows on HD2 , plug back HD1 and then install on HD2. That way in the GRUB boot menu (if you use grub of course tongue ) you'll be able to choose between windows 1 , windows 2 and linux withou any further trouble

5 Reply by LarryT

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Re: Does XP really "hate" XP on that other drive?

ThunderM wrote:

i would do something like unplug HD1 , instal windows on HD2 , plug back HD1 and then install on HD2. That way in the GRUB boot menu (if you use grub of course tongue ) you'll be able to choose between windows 1 , windows 2 and linux withou any further trouble

... not exactly ! You need to use the map and hide/unhide command in grub so win is hidden to win2, and first drive is change two seoncd  : grub is not able to boot off a second hard drive running win (only linux).

here is an example of working grub : 

 title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
password linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-14.img

title Dom
unhide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,3)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

title Yaouenn
password yqle1011
unhide (hd0,3)
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

and about map command : http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/grub/h … rub_4.html

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)