dual boot two hd s

Hi, If I have Win XP installed on my C-Drive and I have Vista installed cleanly on another drive (D-Drive) is there any way I could edit the boot.ini file on my C-Drive and make it a dual boot configuration. I switched my sata cables around and made my D-Drive the C-Drive and then installed Vista on it. I played around with it for awhlie just to make sure it was somewhat stable and had drivers for all my hardware and that most of my software would run on it. I have all my development tools on my C-Drive so I didn't want to take any chances. Vista ran and is running fine but in order to use XP now I have to keep switching my cables back and forth. So hence the question, is there any way I can edit the .ini file I know vista uses BCD and not boot.ini but I figured if I could point to Vista from the boot.ini that it would work. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post......Eric

Try this: http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/intro.php
-- Zack Whittaker » ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk » MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org » Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk » This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared that up!
--: Original message follows :-- "Ribeye" wrote in message

Hi, If I have Win XP installed on my C-Drive and I have Vista installed cleanly on another drive (D-Drive) is there any way I could edit the boot.ini file on my C-Drive and make it a dual boot configuration. I switched my sata cables around and made my D-Drive the C-Drive and then installed Vista on it. I played around with it for awhlie just to make sure it was somewhat stable and had drivers for all my hardware and that most of my software would run on it. I have all my development tools on my C-Drive so I didn't want to take any chances. Vista ran and is running fine but in order to use XP now I have to keep switching my cables back and forth. So hence the question, is there any way I can edit the .ini file I know vista uses BCD and not boot.ini but I figured if I could point to Vista from the boot.ini that it would work. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post......Eric

Ribeye wrote:

I know vista uses BCD and not boot.ini but I figured if I could point to Vista from the boot.ini that it would work.

No one seems to know the answer to this yet. Officially, it's not possible.
To solve your problem, the official way to do it would be to use the Vista boot loader as the default, and simply point it to your other Microsoft based operating systems regardless of which disk/partition they're on. You may also be able to switch the boot drive order from the SATA BIOS.
(I use SCSI, and I can just change the SCSI ID if I need to).
-- Gerry Hickman (London UK)

Hi Eric,
I posted a reply earlier today which addresses the multi-boot scenario; but first here's what's really going on:
Windows Vista's BCD automatically (by default) enumerates partitions based on partition and cabling sequence from those in BIOS. What this means is, whatever drive is PRIMARY/MASTER ends up having the partition letters C, D, E (and so forth)... then Primary/Slave, then Secondary/Master, then Secondary/Slave, then SATA 0, SATA 1, etc...
KEEP IN MIND, Vista's partition lettering is *independent* from XP's. So a partition letter of "F:" in XP might translate to "K:" in Vista (hey, i have tons of partitions spread across 5 HDDs, hence my experience). Also, partitions are re-lettered upon OS boot; they are not hard-coded anywhere.
SO, once you have the cables in a proper position, use the steps below to modify the Partition boot sequence as the BCD would see them, usually with System/Active = C: [as with XP]. For my config, Vista has "Partition=G:\" even though the actual partition letter is C:\ once I'm within the Vista OS.
Here's the step-by-step for BCD editing: "BCD EDITING USING VISTA INSTALLER DISC/RECOVERY CONSOLE"
a) In BIOS, verify that CD-ROM is the first device booted b) Using the Vista installer CD/DVD, insert it; reboot c) When it prompts to load from CD, press any key d) When Vista's installer is loaded (you can "install"), select the "recovery" text-link at the bottom-left part of the screen e) After it loads the drivers, you can ignore any prompts to get to the menu options f) Select the COMMAND PROMPT choice (not sure the labeling), and there you can run BCDEdit.exe commands g) For help, run "BCDEdit.exe /?" ... or simply type "bcdedit.exe /enum" to see what's there. h) Standard commands are "bcdedit.exe /set {ntldr} Description WindowsXP"
- naseru
"Ribeye" wrote in message

Hi, If I have Win XP installed on my C-Drive and I have Vista installed cleanly on another drive (D-Drive) is there any way I could edit the boot.ini file on my C-Drive and make it a dual boot configuration. I switched my sata cables around and made my D-Drive the C-Drive and then installed Vista on it. I played around with it for awhlie just to make sure it was somewhat stable and had drivers for all my hardware and that most of my software would run on it. I have all my development tools on my C-Drive so I didn't want to take any chances. Vista ran and is running fine but in order to use XP now I have to keep switching my cables back and forth. So hence the question, is there any way I can edit the .ini file I know vista uses BCD and not boot.ini but I figured if I could point to Vista from the boot.ini that it would work. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post......Eric