Hi all this my first timehere hope I'm in righ Forum and forgive my ignorance, I have computer that I upgraded to Vista, its working ok as far as I can tell maybe latter on I will be asking about that, I have two large hard drives and would like to be able to set up two different operating systems, i have tried several way but failed loaded one as master, disconected then changed slave back to master loaded XP pro changed backto slave but could never load as at start up Vista takes over can anyone help be gentle I'm not expert Thanks Dennis
If you install both OSs on the same drive you get the choice as to which OS you want to boot from. Its literally a list... 1. Microsoft Vista 2. Windows XP Default will load in (30,29,28,27...) secs This is provided by the bootloader stored in the MBR of the drive. Because you are using windows you will be using the Windows bootloader. Linux users are quite familiar with the boot loaders Grub and Lilo. If both your OSs are installed on the same drive and you dont have this list then you will have to either reinstall the bootloader or redefine the bootloader in windows. This is usually an easy task... you can use notepad or windows gui but when I had to do this with vista recently it got all complicated but I fudeged it somehow. Post back if this is the case. Installing an OS on a master hdd and a second OS on a slave hdd (or master on another channel) is a little different. Your BIOS has a list of boot devices. The most logical way for this list is 1.Floppy 2.ROM 3.IDE channel 1 (master 1st, slave 2nd) 4.IDE channel 2 (master 1st, slave 2nd) It will start at the top of the list and work its way down until it finds something it can attempt to boot from. Because you have vista on the master drive of IDE 1, BIOS doesnt see the need to look any further for a boot device and goes with vista. Instead of changing the boot order (to choose slave of IDE 1) in BIOS everytime you want to load your other OS BIOS lets you choose which boot device you want to use. It usually involves pressing F8 or F2 or whatever just after POST when your pc beeps after you turn it on. This will give you a list of your boot devices.... floppy, rom, ide 1 master, ide 1 slave, ide 2 master, ide 2 slave etc. Just choose the drive you want to boot from and it wont change the default order stored in CMOS. I couldnt say what key you need to press upon startup cos its different depending on your motherboard/BIOS. I personally have to press F2. Most motherboards have a list of functions when you first turn the pc on. Mine is Setup<del>, BootOrder<F2> I personally prefer to install my OSs on different drives, but it doesnt really make any difference given the size of hard drives nowadays. Sorry to refer to IDE1 and IDE2 etc. I realise you might well use SATA drives.... im yet to be a proud owner of a SATA drive or motherboard so do it the old way! Ive not long upgraded from my old 450mhz celeron!
yep, i too agree with Zeus well mine is: Setup<Del> & BootOrder<F12> on Vista box & Setup<Del> & BootOrder <Esc> on Debian box [ot]nnaahh[/ot] but i prefer to use only 1 HDD
[ot]I've got an EFI, so I just need to hold down the ALT key to show the boot menu when I don't want to boot the default OS [/ot]
show off, my systems only use BIOS, you can go off people can't you [/ot]just install either OS first but be careful choosing the install location of the second OS & remember to partition your drive (if only using one, it doesn't matter if using 2 drives
I have had up too 5 different OS's on one hard drive.. the trick is too put them in order.. Like say, Win 98/ XP/longhorn/Vista/Win 2008 server/.. this makes it easy. Just use Partition Magic to create Partitions and install..
