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Solve : Recognising new hardware?

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Hello

I am writing for a bit of advice.

I have just installed a hard drive in my PC tower. This is in addition to the drive (C) I already have and which holds Windows XP Home.

I have bought this additional disk so that I can install Windows XP Professional on it. The Professional CD I have is a special edition 120-day version for me to prepare for a Windows exam.

When I double-click on My Computer I cannot see the new Hitachi disk, but I can see my usual CD-ROM drive, C drive, etc.

I can, however, see my new disk in Device Manager, and I can see it in Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management. In Computer Management I can see disk 0 (my C drive) and disk 1 (my new Hitachi drive).

My C drive shows a healthy NTFS system, while my new drive is showing Unallocated. If I right-click on 'Unallocated' I can see that I am to be invited to create a new partition and then Primary partition.
please?

I do not want to give Windows XP Professional any kind of prominence because I will remove it after the 120-day trial expires and I want to be able to choose when I load it. I don't want the PC to boot into Professional and then for me to have to choose my Home edition, because all of my files and programmes are on the latter.

Where do I go from here, please?

Many thanks for any advice.

SteveI've never dual booted a computer. 

(I cheated, and installed one of those drive bays where you can swap drives.)

I was poking around on the 'net last night, but couldn't find good INSTRUCTIONS for you on how to dual-boot XP Home and XP Pro.

I will throw out the hardware solution, based on the "ifs" -- if you have space in your system (a 5 1/4 inch bay), if you have the money (they're not terribly expensive) and if you want to deal with swapping physical drives -- you can have XP Home on one drive and XP Pro on another -- if's it's worth the bother for four months!   

I'm almost sure there's a way to dual-boot them, but I'm not sure of how to do it.XP Home and Pro can be installed in a dual boot configuration.  You can't install the second operating system from within XP Home - you have to restart the computer and boot from the XP Pro CD.  During the XP Pro installation choose the new hard drive as your installation location.

Your new hard drive doesn't show up in My Computer because it has not been formatted.  Create the new partition using Computer Management -> Disk Management.

  Quote from: Eg0Death on September 16, 2008, 06:39:57 AM

Your new hard drive doesn't show up in My Computer because it has not been formatted.  Create the new partition using Computer Management -> Disk Management.

Then format.Solid advice so far...then check you're MBoard documentation to see how to enter setup on power up...
Normally Delete at start or F10 or F2......
Once in there you simply choose which drive to boot to for that session and that will determine XP Home or Pro...
Most machines if this isn't done each time will boot to whichever drive was booted last.

Then when you are done with your XP Pro experiment you can simply format the new drive and use it for storage...Many thanks for all your advice, but I am not quite home and dry yet.

I have installed the new hard drive and installed XP Pro onto it. In Computer Management this is drive f (as opposed to drive c with which holds my Home edition). My new drive is also the slave according to the BIOS. I have an ASUS motherboard.

When I start the tower I go straight in to Home - which is fine - and if I press F8 there is an OPTION: Go to OS Choices. But when I select OS Choices, I see only my Home edition and not XP Pro.

I am sure XP Pro has been set up correctly - if I go to my new f drive I can see the Windows profile I created there.

In short, I'm happy with a boot directly into Home, but would it that when I choose OS Choices that I can actually see my XP Pro. Is this a Boot.ini isue?

Thanks for your help again.

SteveThe step you missed is the important one and sorry i forgot to mention it.
On the initial install your existing drive needs to be unplugged...power or data cable is fine choose the easiest.
Then jumper the new drive as Master and do the XPPro setup as usual.
When you've booted to it and are satisfied that everything works power down.
Then re-connect your original drive jumpered to Master and hook up the 2nd drive jumpered as slave...
In essence you are creating 2 C: drives and letting the BIOS decide which one to boot to.....
Keep in mind these drive letters will be swapped around every time you boot:

Boot to Home: Home is C: and Pro shows as D:
Boot to Pro Pro is C: and Home becomes D:

Sorry about the oversight on my part...Hello Patio

Many thanks for your message.

I did basically what you suggested and I now have Win Home on my master drive (C) and Win XP professional on an F drive - the slave.

But when I start the PC I do not get a choice as to which OS I use. I am happy to go directly to Home, but when I press F* it gives me a 'Choose your OS' option. When I click on this I can only see Home - rendering the installation of Win XP Professional useless.

This is something to do with my boot.ini file, I think. At the moment it looks like this:

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="MICROSOFT Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows XP Setup"

The boot.ini is held in a folder on my C drive called temp, the path being C:\temp. It is not in my system32 folder or even in the windows folder on my C drive.

I've been on the Microsoft Win XP site and got this from there:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition"  /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect

Sadly, that does not work either. It only gives me the Win XP Home option under 'Choose your OS' having pressed F8.

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks.

SteveI assume you did this, Steve, but I have to ask:  did you RESET the jumpers like they were before you started so you have the correct master / slave settings?

Thank you,
BrianHello Aegis

Thanks for your post.

I wouldn't know how to do that.

I opened the tower and disconnected the C drive hard disk (pulled out the two lots of cables). Then I inserted and screwed in the new hard drive. Then I inserted and installed Win XP Prof on the only hard drive - my new one - in the tower.

Then I reconnected the cables to my old C drive with Win XP Home on it.

I then went to Computer Management and saw that C (Win XP Home) was my master drive and my new drive (F) was the secondary drive.

Should I have done something else?

Thanks again.

SteveYou need to use the BIOS to switch which drive to boot to...i thought this is how you wanted it setup so they were completely seperate as you are getting rid of it in a bit.
To enter setup you watch the screen to see what key to use...Delete F10 or F2.
Once in setup you go to the boot device screen and select which drive you want to boot to   highlight it and press F10 to save changes and Exit...
It will now boot to which drive you selected. Quote from: patio on September 18, 2008, 04:37:02 PM
You need to use the BIOS to switch which drive to boot to...i thought this is how you wanted it setup so they were completely seperate as you are getting rid of it in a bit.
To enter setup you watch the screen to see what key to use...Delete F10 or F2.
Once in setup you go to the boot device screen and select which drive you want to boot to   highlight it and press F10 to save changes and Exit...
It will now boot to which drive you selected.
I used this method a number of years ago to dual boot 98 & XP - worked great and I never had a problem.It's the cleanest there is...and presents the fewest issues.
If i were installing an OS for just a test run or on a temporary basis as the OP is this is the only way to go.
You can share files etc. but the OS's never even see each other.Many thanks again for your replies.

Yes, I did want it to boot into the C drive (Windows Home) and that is what it does. But I cannot access (through F8's 'Choose your OS system' option) Windows XP Professional. It gives me no choice but Win XP Home.

So, I have Win XP professional installed on my new secondary disk (drive F), but cannot access it.

I want it to boot as normal - as it does now - but I also want it to give me the choice of Win XP Home or Win XP professional if and when I press F8. At the moment it doesn't.

Thanks.

SteveAt startup - you must enter the BIOS (ESC, DEL, F2, or some other key - watch for message on startup screen similar to: "Press XX to enter setup.")

Then look for "Boot Options," or similar. Change the boot order to boot from the hard drive (OS) you want for that session.

"Save and exit."

The computer will re-start and boot from the drive that you just selected.

You need to repeat this routine each time that you want to change the boot drive.


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