Dual Boot Question

[seaegg]

I have a Asus A8V Deluxe which currently has 1 IDE HDD connected running XP Pro. Is it possible to install a SATA HDD on the SATA port and install XP Pro on it and use a dual boot configuration? I was wondering about that thinking the system might get confused with 2 same OSs coming up in the boot screen. Do I have to set my boot device priority to the Sata or can I let it go to the boot screen in the hope Windoes will be able to differentiate between the 2 drives. The ATA HDD is attached to the Promise HDD controller and the Primary and Secondary are all populated with 3 burners and a DVD-Rom.

[Ian]

One disc will need to contain the master boot record. You'll want this one to be the default boot drive. Since your IDE HDD is already doing this, I'd leave it as the default.

If you install another copy of XP, it will modify the boot loader so that you can choose from the two installations. You can go in and modify this and set the default OS and how long the menu will show up, etc.

[dodecahedron]

right click My Computer (or Control Panel -> System) -> Advanced tab ->n click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section -> Edit button.
you can "rename" the OSes etc.

[seaegg]

Thanks for the replies fellas but I got lazy and bought Windows XP Professional 64 Bit Edition so I shouldn't have that problem now. I plan to use that SATA drive exclusively for all my audio/video work. I'll probably pick up a Seagate after the OS arrives. Also added another BG of DDR400 so I should be covered for at least a couple years.

[seaegg]

Well i got XP64 loaded onto my SATA drive and it's working great so far although it's a mystery to me why my old Epson 860 is recognised by 64 and drivers installed but it has no drivers for my R200. The other pain in the butt is that because my IDE is on the Promise and my Sata is on the Via controller I have to go into boot menu in the bios every time i want to boot to a different OS. Aus should have a toggle key like the Asrock Mobos that you can press during post and select which drive you want to boot from at any given time instead of having to press Del and navigate through the Bios.

[seaegg]

Ok a different scenario. If I sell my IDE drive and install another SATA to the VIA controller I'd then have 2 Sata drives on port 0 and port 1. I would have XP Pro 64 on one and XP Pro SP2 on the other will that config give me the dual boot screen when I start up where I can choose one or the other?

[Alektron]

You just need to install a boot loader in the SATA drive on port 0. There are some different choices. You can look around and pick one. I've tried two so far. BootMagic, which I used for a while. It came with PartionMagic. But once I installed SuSE 9.1 on the same hard drive as Windows 2000, I put a linux boot loader called Grub, which I now use to pick either Windows or Linux. I bet there are a few other loaders out there. When you first boot up, the bios checks the order of the hard drive boot. If you have it set to port 0, it goes there and quickly finds the boot loader. Then it checks your configuration, and you have 5-10 seconds to pick the boot up. Pretty straight forward.

[seaegg]

Thanks I have Partition Magic so I'll try it's boot loader.

[Alektron]

There's a chance that you may be asked by BootMagic to create a special partition at the beginning of the hard drive with a FAT32 format in order to store the loader. I can't remember why I created it, but I think it was BootMagic that told me I had to. All the partitions of my two hard disks are NTFS format to allow 4GB file sizes, except for that one small partition.

[dodecahedron]

The other pain in the butt is that because my IDE is on the Promise and my Sata is on the Via controller I have to go into boot menu in the bios every time i want to boot to a different OS. Aus should have a toggle key like the Asrock Mobos that you can press during post and select which drive you want to boot from at any given time instead of having to press Del and navigate through the Bios.

you might want to check the possibility of upgrading the motherboard BIOS.
i think that for some motherboards Asus fixed that problem with a BIOS update.

[seaegg]

Many thanks to all you guys for your helpful suggestions. I bought a program online called Bootus for $15 Euro and it worked like a charm. I didn't have to create a Fat Partition either. It is such a ridiculously simple program to use I would even reccommend it to a complete novice. Man am I happy no more trips to the Bios to switch between HDDS.

[dodecahedron]

URL ?

[seaegg]

http://www.boot-us.com/

[dodecahedron]

OK thanks.